Key takeaways
- The
Chinese government is steadily gaining influence in the nations of the global
South. Since 2013, this process has been taking place under the label of the
Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
- Influence
is gained through Chinese-led international institutions such as BRICS+ and regional
cooperation forums such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Significantly,
these institutions exclude the global North, effectively creating an
alternative global governance system in opposition to the liberal international
order (LIO).
- Influence-building
takes place through regional mechanisms such as the Forum on China-Africa
Cooperation (FOCAC) and the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum (CASCF), and
also via bilateral trade and investment deals.
- The
EU (like the US) has been slow to take the BRI and Chinese alternative
order-building seriously. Despite talk of a ‘Global Gateway’, Brussels has so
far failed to construct a coherent and coordinated response.
- The
EU needs to understand why China’s alternative order has more appeal in many
parts of the global South. Reasons include the following: the absence of
post-colonial baggage and dependency; Beijing’s insistence on non-interference
in domestic politics; the relative ease of obtaining financial assistance and
investment capital; and Chinese infrastructure construction know-how.
- The
EU needs to find a way to build more influence across the global South as a
counter to China. The basis of a renewed soft power campaign should be greater
respect for the needs, interests, and identities of global South countries
rather than depending on the uncertain appeal of ‘European values’ alone. The
EU needs to show that it is capable of listening to its potential partners
rather than just lecturing them about norms and values. A good start would be
to increase diplomatic engagement via EU-led regional cooperation mechanisms
promoting and facilitating Global Gateway investments.
China’s challenge to the
West
Countries in the global North
– defined as the United States of America and European nations, as well as
other highly economically developed countries such as Canada and Japan – tend
to assume that people worldwide, despite some minor cultural differences, share
their belief system. For instance, it is taken for granted that most developing
nations in the global South automatically buy into ‘Western’ norms and values –
or that if they don’t, they must have been indoctrinated by an authoritarian
propaganda machine. Most obviously, ‘Western
values’ include European-style democracy and human rights,
underwritten economically by the system of global free market capitalism.
Clearly, not everybody in the
global North makes the assumption that developing countries will recognise the
soft power appeal of the ‘Western model’, but many – including some policymakers
– do. And, probably as an unacknowledged, perhaps unconscious legacy of the
colonial era when Europe
ran the world, they tend to do so without sufficient critical reflection upon
the role of the global South in the international system. Europe’s colonial
past – which involved virtually every country in Western Europe, including the
UK, France,
Germany,
Spain,
Portugal,
Italy,
the
Netherlands, Belgium,
and even Denmark,
Norway,
Sweden
and Finland
– continues to colour the developing world’s relations with the EU. At the same
time, as Belgian historian David
Van Reybouck points out, the consequences of European imperialism –
inequality and exploitation – are underemphasised in Europe itself. Chatham
House scholar Hans Kundnani goes so far as to refer to the EU as a “vehicle for
imperial
amnesia.”
Be that as it may, internationally,
‘Western values’ are transmitted through what is often called the ‘liberal
international order’ (LIO).
The LIO rests on the international system represented by multilateral
institutions such as the United Nations (UN), the World Trade Organization (WTO),
the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. All of these
institutions have their headquarters in the US or Europe. Hence, it goes
without saying that the global South has a limited role in the running of these
organisations. Even in the UN, three of the five permanent members of the
Security Council (with the right of veto)
are Western countries. Importantly, none of the five permanent members is from
Africa or Latin America, while the sole Asian representative is China.
However, bit by bit and
without the process being particularly well observed in Europe, China is
constructing an alternative
global order which challenges the global governance system based
on Western values. As Rush
Doshi points out, China is playing a “long game”, seeking
to increase geopolitical and geo-economic influence over decades. It is doing this
by gaining influence in the global South through instruments such as investments
and bilateral deals. It is also using Chinese-led multilateral institutions
such as the BRICS+
platform and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
These arrangements exclude Western countries and so stand outside the LIO.
It should be noted that for
each region of the global South there is a dedicated Chinese-led regional
cooperation mechanism. The importance of these is often underestimated in the
West but emphasised by many Chinese
scholars. Apart from fostering economic cooperation, these are
instruments for gradually transmitting Chinese norms of cooperation to partner
countries. Among them, the most prominent platforms are the SCO in Central
Asia, the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC)
in Africa, the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum (CASCF)
in the Middle East, and the China-CELAC.
forum in Latin America.Institutional
arrangements such as these are subsumed under the overarching label of the Belt
and Road Initiative (BRI),
alongside bilateral deals with individual countries The BRI is the flagship of
Chinese foreign policy in the Xi Jinping era and now has a decade of activity
behind it.
Regional cooperation platforms play a key role in the
BRI and broader Chinese foreign policy in the global South.
They allow China to build influence and simultaneously dampen suspicions on the
part of target partners, conveying the idea that the benefits of cooperating
with China will be spread fairly evenly among all who join the platforms. They
also encourage countries to see their region as a community of sorts – in
Chinese official jargon, a ‘community
of shared future.’
This may seem like mere
rhetoric, but there is evidence to demonstrate that regional cooperation
platforms such as the SCO have achieved a degree of success in defusing
tensions and enhancing economic ties between neighbouring nations. Most
notably, Central Asia has been relatively peaceful
since the advent of the SCO in 2001 despite ongoing territorial disputes in the
region. These might have flared into something more serious if it had not been
for the annual discussions carried out behind closed doors in the SCO – with
China and Russia at the helm rather than at each other’s throats.
It is often assumed that the
primary goal of the BRI is connectivity through investment in infrastructure.
This is one of its key aspects – but there are others. Among them, in addition
to the aforementioned regional cooperation platforms, are what the Chinese
government calls ‘people-to-people
exchanges.’ Often, these consist of training sessions and trips to China for
selected elite groups in partner countries. Very specific groups are targeted:
military officers, civil service elites, and journalists. Scholarships
to Chinese universities are also offered to impoverished students, for instance
in Africa or Pakistan. Such activities are often coordinated through Confucius
Institutes, hundreds of which have been set up around the world.
Although Confucius Institutes have been controversial in Western countries due
to the perception that they are instruments
instruments through which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) spreads propaganda
and monitors Chinese students abroad, in the developing world they are often
seen more positively: as platforms offering education
and opportunities to locals.
Through such methods, the
Chinese government is generating considerable influence in the global South. There
is copious evidence of such influence. First, global
South countries tend to vote in line with the PRC in the UN, for instance on the issue of
human
rights. Second, there is a long-term trend for developing
countries to switch
their allegiance from Taiwan to China, the most recent case being the Pacific
microstate of Nauru,
which dumped Taiwan immediately after the January 2024 Taiwanese general
election. This development left Taiwan with only
twelve remaining diplomatic allies worldwide. Other signs of
influence include lack of criticism of China’s human rights record, high
attendance at BRI
forums such as the one held in Beijing in October 2023 even
in the absence of representatives from most of the global North, and opinion
polls showing a surprising amount of approval for China. For instance, a Pew
Research Center survey published in July
2023 revealed a favourable attitude towards China among 80
per cent of the Nigerian population.
In short, there is good reason
to believe that China is becoming increasingly influential in the global South
and that its multilateral institutional mechanisms are gaining a considerable
amount of credibility in many countries. Meanwhile, according to a recent
report published by the Munich Security Conference, many
people in the developing world believe the “western emphasis on the ‘rules
based order’ is hypocritical and aimed at preserving the status quo of western
domination, including over the global South.”
The clock is ticking – but
not the one you think
Some observers suggest that
China has a ‘demographic
timebomb.’ This is the argument that as China’s population
ages and declines, it will run out of younger workers and the economy will
stagnate. Indeed, China’s economic growth is slowing down as its
decades-long ‘economic miracle’ comes to an end. At the same time, China’s
political system is thought to be unsustainable in the long term and
incompatible with a free market system. So, the argument runs, China cannot
keep rising and must now go into decline.
However, there are no signs so
far that China is collapsing economically. Economic
data reveal that China is still managing to sustain 4-5
per cent economic growth per annum despite high levels of corporate debt and
the bursting of the housing bubble in 2023. Nor is there evidence that China’s
political system is imploding or that the population are losing faith in the
Party. The CCP
under President Xi Jinping retains a firm grip on power, and control has become
more entrenched over the last decade. Research
done in China by Bruce Dickson, a professor at George Washington University in
the US, reveals that there is a surprisingly high level of long-term popular
support for the government. This finding, albeit in need of an update for the
2020s, negates the argument that the Chinese population’s supposed frustrations
are about to boil over into open revolt.
At any rate, assuming that the
CCP holds onto power (as seems likely), its policy of building influence in the
global South is likely to pay dividends in the long run. Economists note that
trade between countries in the global South is rising steadily. According to
one recent calculation, South-South economic transactions are catching up with
trade between nations in the global North. Figures
show that South-South trade increased from 10.8 to 25.0 per cent of world trade
between 1995 and 2020, while North-North trade’s share declined from 52.0 to
37.1 per cent over the same period. This means that as the global South
economies collectively gain a larger and larger share in the world economy,
they will start to push for more say in how the international system works. The
steady increase in the global South’s clout constitutes a paradigm shift for
the world which is already in motion.
As China gradually becomes a
trusted partner of many global South countries via facilitatory mechanisms such
as the BRI, BRICS+, regional cooperation platforms, and bilateral trade and
investment deals, it is likely to benefit from its companies dominating the growing
local markets. For instance, Chinese mobile
phone manufacturers already have the lion’s share of
business in Africa, far ahead of Apple and Samsung. Chinese companies have
gained access to supplies of crucial raw materials for industrial production in
countries such as Angola (oil), Democratic Republic of Congo (cobalt) and
Zambia (copper). As already stated, fewer and fewer developing nations are
inclined to continue siding with
Taiwan or to criticise China’s human rights record.
In short, while the global
South is gaining economic importance, China is simultaneously gaining influence
in the global South. As Chinese companies build infrastructure funded by loans
from Chinese financial institutions, and the CCP gains acceptance for its norms
of cooperation via its multilateral institutions such as regional forums and
BRICS+, the Beijing government has an increasing capacity to mould interactions
with global South countries. Such influence does not necessarily come in the
form of coercive ‘debt
trap diplomacy’ as some Western media
outlets have suggested, but more in the form of general economic and political
leverage. Alongside this leverage, the PRC attempts to demonstrate that it is a
trustworthy partner which respects the wishes and needs of countries who choose
to cooperate according to modern China’s preferred norms of interaction.
Meanwhile, the West has been
slow to react to China’s BRI-backed influence-building campaign. The Biden
administration’s ‘Build Back Better World’ (B3W) and the EU’s ‘Global Gateway’ lack
substance two years after they were first announced. Since
decolonisation, developing countries have become used to the West talking about
aid and development without seeing many results. For instance, gone is the era
when the whole of Africa could simply be considered a basket case in need of
charity. While some countries do remain desperately poor, while of course
remaining far below the level of prosperity in the global North, other nations
have made great strides forward and Africa
now has many of the world’s fastest growing economies. Yet the stereotyped
images of starving children and charity concerts remain fixed in the Western
mind, in large part as a legacy of the 1984 Band
Aid concert. In Western Europe, such assumptions stand
alongside residual memories of empire and the unspoken understanding that the
US and Europe
ought to educate the rest of the world about supposedly civilised standards of
democracy and human rights. There is still little discussion about what the
global South can – and will – bring to the table as it grows stronger over the
course of the twenty-first century.
What to do, EU?
As we have seen, although it
is important not to overstate the level of progress, China
is steadily building an alternative global order through its own
multilateral and minilateral institutions. These include global South countries
but exclude almost all of the global North (Russia of course is included
in BRICS+ and the SCO). According to the United
Nations, the global South includes 78 countries. Allowing the
Chinese government free rein to build a network of relationships with the
developing world thus permits it to establish a large bloc of nations which
will side with it in UN votes, build economic ties, and potentially group
together against the West.
China’s new order can be
understood as having three levels. First, the broad level of global cooperation
labelled “BRI”. Second, the regional level of cooperation which includes
regional platforms such as FOCAC and CASCF. And finally, nested within these,
China’s bilateral relations and deals with individual countries. Through this
three-tier structure, China is gradually spreading its influence and leverage
in the global South.
With this increase in
influence comes growing acceptance of Chinese norms and values such as the
principle of political non-interference, emphasising collective over individual
rights, and acceptance of authoritarianism rather than democracy. Quite
obviously, such norms stand in direct, stark opposition to so-called “European
values.” Although the jury is out on how far Chinese norms have been welcomed
or accepted by its partners, the challenge to the West – and ‘normative
power Europe’ in particular – is clear. China is steadily socialising
the global South, region by region, into its norms.
So, what to do about China’s
challenge? First of all, the EU needs to develop a clearer focus concerning how
to engage with countries in the global South. It needs to turn discourse about
the ‘Global Gateway’ into a reality, building a coherent response to the BRI.
Apart from anything else, prioritising investment in the developing world is a
win-win for Europe if it creates jobs and persuades at least some of those who
intend to attempt migration to the EU to stay at home. In other words,
investing in economic development in the global South is also good for Europe
in the long run – if the EU plays the right cards.
Brussels also needs to show
global South countries greater respect, making clear that they are not regarded
as second-class world citizens. An important part of this is to understand that
‘European values’ are not automatically universally accepted, and that attempts
to force them onto countries which were once colonised by European masters are
not appreciated. Even if this may be hard to swallow, European elites do need
to listen to their counterparts in the developing world rather than lecturing
them on ‘European values.’ The global South is steadily gaining economic
importance and it would be wise not to ignore China’s role in this transition.
Ultimately, the obvious
strategy to counter China’s advances in the global South is to increase
diplomatic activity in selected countries – especially those which appear to be
wavering or sitting on the fence concerning cooperation with China. The EU needs
to enhance bilateral ties with individual countries. At the same time, there is
a need for new regional mechanisms as platforms for improving ties.
Behind-the-scenes diplomacy can pave the way to increased influence, and
dangling some carrots in the form of investment deals under the label of Global
Gateway cannot hurt. The way to compete with China strategically is to make an
equal or better offer than China, particularly in countries or regions which
appear to be uncertain about the benefits of developing closer ties with
Beijing. In the end, the potential risk of doing nothing far outweighs the
costs of devoting more time and money to the global South.
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Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Research Executive Agency (REA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
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