Two Summits Show Two Contrasting Geopolitical Visions of Today's World

July 03, 2023

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The month of May has seen two summits held in close proximity to each other. On the one hand, there was the G7 summit, led by the United States, compromised of its partners Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom, which was held in Hiroshima. On the other, China held its first-ever “China-Central Asia Summit” comprised of the countries to its immediate west, including Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan. Beijing’s Foreign Ministry described the summit as a “critical historical juncture” following the trend of win-win cooperation that it “reflected” the “people’s aspirations for everlasting friendship.”

 

While the China-Central Asia Summit focused on matters such as national sovereignty, counter-terrorism, infrastructure development and economic integration, trade, and energy, the G7 summit in notable contrast, focused on overt geopolitical goals which sought to target China across a range of issues. This included Taiwan, but also the matter of so-called “economic coercion,” a term which has been widely criticized as hypocritical for inventing a criterion to describe China’s own retaliatory measures against countermeasures, yet being blind to the offensive sanctions policy of the U.S. and its allies.

 

It has been said as such that the two summits represent two distinct geopolitical priorities and worldviews, that of the “Global North” against the “Global South.” On the one hand, there is a group of nations, who long constituted the established world order and the bulk of its wealth, striving to maintain their existing privileges against the rise of competitors. Whereas on the other, there are nations who, having been disadvantaged, are striving to find new breakthroughs in their own development outside of the Western political model. This subsequently paints a message about the state of the world today, as well as the underlying motivations of the so-called “China Challenge.”

 

 

G7: The Old Guard

The G7 group, formed in the Cold War era, is sometimes described as constituting the world’s “richest major economies.” Although it is increasingly out of touch with the global reality, the group’s mantra is more so elitist and ideological, as opposed to being practical, and is essentially a coalition of former Empires which is being led by the United States. In other words, the incorporation of the “Old World Order” (Pre-1945) into a new model. Within the G7 group, you have two former hegemonic European colonial Empires, Britain and France, who after World War II, submitted the baton of global leadership to the United States.

 

In conjunction with them, there are then the three defeated Axis powers, Italy, Germany, and Japan. Although these three states once sought to challenge the dominance of the allies, they were ultimately reincorporated into the American domain following the war and became champions of the order Washington built. Then, finally, you have Canada, a country which was a dominion of the British Empire, but is now under the hegemony of the U.S. The underlying theme is that all these countries, through imperialism, established an underlying sense of economic privilege which came at the expense of the Global South. In other words, a permanent distortion of global wealth and resources.

 

 

The rise of the Global South

What we understand as the “Global South” on the other hand, constitutes countries who have been subject to the nations above, and because of colonialism, have not been able to attain equal economic development or sovereign privilege, placing them at a permanent disadvantage. These countries emerged during the Cold War, as the former Imperial domains of Britain and France gained independence in the new system of sovereign states. These countries have often, as a legacy of their history, faced poverty, instability and often war and conflict as the result of illegitimate state structures being imposed on them, or economically motivated borders which have generated ethno-sectarian conflict.

 

The economic system led by the U.S., and its financial institutions, known as “Bretton Woods,” have also made obstacles for development in Global South countries extremely difficult, exacerbating the gulf in global wealth disparity. Prior to China, the only meaningful sized country that has made it completely from “Global South status” to the “first world” standing is the Republic of Korea (South Korea), but that itself illustrates another point, that Global South countries are only able to truly develop if they subject themselves to the geopolitical goals and preferences of the United States, thus making development politically conditional.

 

However, the rise of China has constituted a gamechanger to global development dynamics, because it is the largest country in history, not under the political control of the West, that has descended from “third world” status to rapid development. The economic ascendancy of China is remarkable. In 1949, the country’s average life expectancy was just 36 years of age, but it is now 77.4 years. In 1960, the average GDP per capita was just $60 annually, but now it is $12,556. China has comprehensively transformed from once being an agrarian peasant nation, wrecked with instability, strife, poverty and death, to becoming a global economic superpower. This may be encapsulated by the story of Shenzhen, which transformed from a small fishing village into one of the largest industrial and technology centers in the world.

 

In pursuing this path, which accelerated rapidly with the adoption of “socialism with Chinese characteristics” in 1978, China has positioned itself as a model and exemplary to other Global South countries as a pathway for their own development. This has formed the underlying philosophy of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), wherein China has sought to lean its infrastructure development and expertise to countries throughout the world, promoting connectivity, integration and what it describes as a “community with a shared future for mankind.” This has included the construction of airports, railways, sea ports, subways, and telecommunications infrastructure, amongst many things.

 

One of the most successful examples of the BRI projects is the China-Laos railway, which connected the landlocked, war-torn Southeast Asian country’s railways to Yunnan Province, giving it a new commercial outlet it never had before. Or, alternatively, the China-Europe railway, an intercontinental freight route which has made it possible to ship cargo across land all the way from Shanghai to Portugal. The BRI has been a global gamechanger, but in doing so, it has attracted disdain and opposition from the aforementioned “Global North” countries who fear the erosion of their long-established global dominance by the rise of China and the empowerment it brings to the Global South.

 

 

The new great game

While the United States once believed that engagement and business with China acted as a transformative force that would herald a transition of its political system to Washington’s own vision, the rise of Beijing on its own terms has led the U.S. to increasingly perceive China as an ideological, political, economic, and strategic competitor which threatens its unipolar hegemony over the world. The U.S. does not look at China’s contributions to global governance or development with praise, but rather constantly sees global affairs as a zero-sum competition wherein its primacy is the only thing that matters. Thus, beginning with the Trump administration in 2017-2018, the U.S. has pursued a series of increasingly hostile measures against Beijing which strives to block its rise and preserve its own technological, economic, and military advantages.

 

Key to this is the perception that China is moving “up” the global value chain in terms of critical technologies and global goods, which subsequently stands to erode the privileges attained by the U.S. and its allies in these fields. So, the U.S. has sought to blacklist thousands of technology companies on its commerce department “entity list,” while also getting allies to agree to these coercive measures, such as for example restrictions on Japanese and the Netherlands companies selling semiconductor fabrication machinery to Beijing. This has coincided with an inward turn to protectionism in the U.S., which has undermined and torn up the liberal, free market system it once championed.

 

U.S.-China competition is extremely consequential for the Global South at large, because it demonstrates the challenges these countries face to develop “on their own terms,” or in other words, not subject to the political, economic, and military dominance of the United States. With the war in Ukraine also being a seismic geopolitical event which has changed the world, there has been a wider rallying effect amongst Global South countries to show more solidarity with each other and achieve a more robust pathway to common development while sustaining their political autonomy.

 

This has been most evident in the rush to join groups such as BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) as well as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). It has also given the chance for Beijing to exert more leadership in assisting these countries on matters of common interest, in particular norms such as “support for national sovereignty” and “non-interference in internal affairs,” both aspects which, for the Global South, have been repeatedly violated and challenged by the West at large. As this has happened, as mentioned, groups such as the G7 have sought to double down on their attempts to solidify their traditional dominance and privileges, to assure they are always “elite” in shaping what they describe as the “rules-based order,” in other words, the West above the rest.

 

The China-Central Asia Summit thus stands as one example of this emerging dichotomy. While the West preaches to other countries and seeks to build a global order revolving exclusively around them, China wants to frame itself as a comprehensive partner of development for less advantaged countries to help address the fundamental inequalities of the “established” world order of such, thus ensuring its own development is ultimately preserved amidst the US attempt to contain it. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Please note: The above contents only represent the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views or positions of Taihe Institute.

 

This article is from the June issue of TI Observer (TIO), which is a monthly publication devoted to bringing China and the rest of the world closer together by facilitating mutual understanding and promoting exchanges of views. If you are interested in knowing more about the October issue, please click here:

http://www.taiheinstitute.org/Content/2023/06-30/2334020338.html

 

 

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