Abu Dhabi recently hosted over 100 policy-makers and scholars from 20 countries of the Global South in the first Global South Economic Forum. Organised by the UAE’s premier institution for grooming diplomats in International Relations, the Anwar Gargash Diplomatic Academy, the Forum witnessed collaboration with the Academy of Contemporary China and World Studies, and the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research, as well as institutes affiliated to Tsinghua University. Deliberations revolved around the raging conflicts in the Middle East and the need for regional peace, the gap in climate finance, and data sovereignty.
Forums such as these serve two primary purposes: they collect global scholarship on a single platform to discuss common solutions to shared problems; and indicate the trend of policy leadership and initiative, especially relevant in a global order whose re-constitution is long overdue. The GSEF might not have underscored issues that have not prefigured in conversations around reforms in international norms, financial architecture, and climate governance; however, its timing, discourses, and agenda-setting echo, in varying degrees of amplitude, Chinese foreign policy in the Middle East and, by extension, in the Global South; and the concerns shaping—and being shaped by—the Global South.
G7: Existential Crisis
The Forum was timed to coincide with the G7 leaders’ summit, under Canada’s presidency, organised at Kananaskis. The G7, marking its 50th anniversary, is an informal grouping of 7 industrialised democracies that aim to act in concert on economic, diplomatic, and military matters; of late, its pre-occupations have concentrated around supply chain resilience and countering China and Russia, the latter expelled after Crimean invasion.
The assembled leaders vowed to formulate policies to impart resilience to supply chains of critical minerals. The summit pivoted on managing an ethical adoption of Artificial Intelligence and deriving benefits from quantum technologies by constituting a working group. However, instead of distilling a coherent vision to reiterate its relevance in the fraying normative architecture, the Kananaskis Summit became a casualty of it.
The absence of a joint statement highlights the lack of coalescence around a common vision. The G7 was founded on shared democratic values and economic future among countries that have achieved a semblance of parity in their (post)industrial market economy; the absence of consensus in this relatively homogenous group poses existential concerns. The failure to iron out a joint statement on Ukraine and a diluted one on the conflicts in the Middle East indicate an absence of comfort that leaders of these advanced democracies hitherto demonstrated. It symptomizes fissures in the US alliance system, especially its transatlantic relationship with Britain and continental Europe. Japan’s PM Ishiba failed to seal a trade deal with Trump: Japan, already subjected to 25% auto and steel tariffs, in addition to 10% baseline tariffs, is likely to slip into recession when reciprocal tariffs hit in July, imperilling Ishiba’s minority government. Germany has tried to mitigate the blow on its pharmaceutical and automobile sector through a fiscal stimulus, albeit inadequately patching its structural issues and failing to arrest recession.
Washington, DC’s closer alignment with Russia on the Ukraine-Russia War and the brief cessation of intelligence-sharing with Ukraine in March upended the transatlantic security consensus, instigating a flurry of inflated defence allocations in European budgets. The secular rise in defence expenditure does not necessarily trickle down to a coordinated strategic vision. For one, US transactionalism and misalignment with Transatlanticism, evident in Vance’s diatribe during the Munich Security Conference, have emboldened votaries of European strategic autonomy, particularly France and the wider E5. Pledging an increased defence expenditure of 5% during the NATO Summit is, contrary to the jubilation of the Americans, likely to hasten this process. By cutting short his stay, Trump demonstrated the intractability of his values with the G7, an impatience that will increasingly be shared mutually.
Despite releasing issue-specific statements, e.g. on AI adoption and migrant smuggling, the G7 has not proactively taken concerted policy steps. Despite creating the Build Back Better World (B3W) infrastructure initiative on the principles of the Blue Dot Network, there was little follow-through, ultimately eroding the countervail to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Its declarations lack tangible deliverables and time-frames; absence of enforcement and accountability does not motivate member-states to rise above their sectional interests in the spirit of multilateral decision-making.
The Assertion of Global South
The G7 Summit reflects the imminent erosion of agenda-setting and norm-leadership of the Global North. The misalignment of values, instigated in large measure by Trump’s diplomatic iconoclasm, will inevitably breed strategic drift. The uncertainty in the international order carves space for the Global South to assert itself; the GSEF is a by-product of that assertion. Unlike the delegates assembled in Alberta, the GSEF was not salvaging its survival, which allowed it wider elbow-room for discussions on international finance and peace and conflict. The assembled delegates highlighted the $4.7-trillion-worth sustainable financing gap in the Global South and promoting trade complementarities. It is reflective of the Global South’s assertiveness on climate change and finance, which disproportionately bears the cascading effects of climate change, with countries foreseen to lose over 20% in their GDP by 2050.
The consensus achieved in Abu Dhabi reinforces the trust deficit in the initiatives led by the Global North, on the heels of major disputes between the Global South and Global North during the Bonn Climate Talks, propelled by unilateral trade mechanisms of Europe. Occasions like these rally Global South around groupings like the G77 and polarise the international system further, deepening in-group biases. However, it is notable that forums in the Global South such as the GSEF and G77 have not sought extinguishing international institutions; rather, by invoking free trade, the rules-based international order, and diplomatic resolution to conflicts, they strengthen the values heretofore championed by the Global North.
It is indicative not of the destruction of international norms but their reinforcement, albeit from different corners, necessitating a re-calibration of international institutions and the passage of norm leadership to the Global South. Because if norm leadership follows from economic and military power, the G7’s share of global GDP has fallen; the Global South accounts for 42% of global GDP and is expected to drive global growth.
Engineering a Sinocentric Global Order
China recognises this shift and has developed its identity as the leader of the Global South. China’s ascent was measured and gradualist: from its opening up in the 1980s to its accession to the WTO, China was “socialised” into international norms; it subsequently utilised its leverage as the world’s manufacturing and trading superpower to voice concerns of the Global South, especially on reforms in the International Monetary Fund and climate governance. Since the 2008 Financial Crisis—perceiving the terminal decline of the West, China has been rallying its Global South partnerships, cultivated through resource and development diplomacy, to fashion a Sinocentric world order. China has led the initiation of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the world’s second-largest multilateral development bank, and the BRICS New Development Bank, both non-members of the Paris Club, disbursing loans on minimum political and reform conditionalities, and labour regulations. Through state-led banks such as the Chinese Exim Bank, China emphasises on the flow of Chinese capital, citizens, technology, and bilateral trade in its projects in developing countries.
These alternatives to the Bretton Woods institutions in the Global South helps diffuse Chinese norms. Through its regional forum diplomacy, evinced in platforms like the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, it presents an alternative to the West-led international order, prioritising informal negotiations for consensus-building, mutual non-interference in domestic affairs, and top-down, state-led development models. The creation of the Global Development and Security Initiatives is a crystallisation of these norms; additionally, the Global Civilisational Initiative aims to legitimise these norms by historicising them in Chinese and non-Western traditions.
China’s global aims run through the Middle East. Since becoming the largest importer of hydrocarbons in 2013, China has accelerated its nuanced outreach in the region. China’s norms of mutual non-interference and preference for top-down implementation with minimal bureaucratic red-tape draw it closer to Gulf monarchies; for them, Chinese investment allows strategic multi-alignment and hedging against the US. MENA was the largest recipient of BRI investments in 2024; the UAE received construction contracts worth over $3 billion. Chinese firms have supported the construction of the world’s largest solar parks in Sweihan and Dubai, supporting UAE’s energy transition. China is the UAE’s largest import source and among its largest investors. Promotion of South-South cooperation is a complementarity both have explored through their economic and diplomatic engagement; the GSEF buttresses it.
Figure 1 Source: Ministry of Investment, UAE (2024). Chart created by author.
To conclude, the GSEF and the G7 present two contradictory pictures of the emerging multipolar order. The discursive embrace of the concerns of the Global South, and China’s active participation, during the GSEF underscores the shift in the global centre of power which the G7, existentially imperilled, has failed to address. The GSEF is likely to become an integral part of the galaxy of Global South forums, potentially aiding a Sinocentric modality of global governance in the post-Western world.
[Image Credit: Nandini Sircar]
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect TGP’s editorial stance.
Parth Seth is a research fellow at India Foundation, a New Delhi-based think tank. He studies the geopolitics and issues of connectivity and multilateralism, particularly of the Middle East and North Africa.
