Xi and Putin are pivoting to the Global South. It may not go to plan

Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin had a message for the Global South when they met in Beijing last month: unite to become stronger.

China and Russia have drawn closer amid simmering tensions with the West, and both are looking to the Global South - developing nations that together account for 40 per cent of the world's GDP and 80 per cent of its population.

The pivot is seen by analysts as a powerful narrative to counter the Western-led world order, but they say it may not bring any real change because of diverging Chinese and Russian interests and the reservations of Global South nations.

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Both Beijing and Moscow have been making use of multilateral platforms centred on developing nations to expand their roles in global and regional affairs. For example, the Brics group of emerging economies - touted as an alternative to the Group of 7 rich nations, with China and Russia among the founding members - last year invited six new countries to join.

Bjorn Alexander Duben, a China and Russia specialist at Jilin University in China's northeast, said it was a "logical strategic choice" for Beijing and Moscow to deepen ties with the Global South, especially since the start of the Ukraine war.

Politically and economically isolated by the West, Russia has become increasingly reliant on China for trade since it invaded Ukraine in 2022. China is meanwhile locked in an intense rivalry with the United States, and faces growing economic pressure and military deterrence from Washington and its allies.

In April, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi proposed "double counteraction" of the US-led alliance in response to the "double deterrence" of Western nations against China and Russia. His Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, said he had floated the idea during their talks in Beijing, and also pledged to stand "shoulder to shoulder" to defend a multipolar world.

During last month's summit, Xi and Putin reaffirmed their commitment to promoting a multipolar world through the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation - the security grouping founded by China and Russia in 2001 - and Brics. China will take over chairmanship of the SCO next month while Russia will host the next Brics summit in October.

"Beijing and Moscow will likely double down on this joint Sino-Russian focus on deepening and institutionalising ties with the states of the Global South in the coming months," Duben said.

But according to Pan Guang, an international relations expert at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, the call to unite the Global South through platforms like Brics and the SCO is largely symbolic.

"[The Global South] is a very vague concept ... there are many practical things that are difficult to promote," he said. "China and Russia have different views on many specific issues related to the Eurasian Economic Union, the Belt and Road Initiative and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation."

He gave the example of the SCO Development Bank, an idea proposed by China that faced resistance from Russia over concerns about Chinese capital flooding into Central Asia, a region traditionally seen as Moscow's "backyard".

Pan said an official deal for the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway was only reached this month after being stalled for decades over financial issues and a lack of enthusiasm from Moscow, which fears its economic interests could be hit by a shortened trade route from China to Europe that bypasses Russia.

China has traditionally used the Trans-Siberian Railway through Russia as a main overland trade route to Europe but has been looking at alternatives since the Ukraine war began. The new railway via Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan would reduce the journey to Europe by 900km (560 miles), making it the shortest trade route between China and the continent.

But Russia's position on the railway appears to have shifted since it invaded Ukraine, with Putin telling Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov that he did not oppose the project and he supported both the belt and road and the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), a Moscow-led trade bloc of former Soviet states.

Pan said Russia's isolation because of the Ukraine war had pushed Moscow closer to Beijing, and that could pave the way for more cooperation under the auspices of the SCO and Brics.

"There are more common interests now," he said, though he added that Beijing could gain more from working with platforms such as the China-Central Asia mechanism to build trust and ties with developing nations.

China sees itself as part of the Global South and as a developing nation that has benefited from globalisation, according to Wang Yiwei, an international relations professor at Renmin University.

He said that gave Beijing a "sense of identity" that it represented the Global South and was obliged to resist Washington's "deglobalisation" efforts and hegemony.

Moscow, however, does not see itself within the grouping nor as a developing nation, according to Wang.

"Russia thinks it is one pole of the world, not a part of the Global South ... it [actually] opposes multipolarity," he said. "So China's narrative is different from Russia's ... their views of the world and pursuit of identity in the future are different - but this does not affect their strategic cooperation."

Putin has long had a vision of reviving Russia as a major world power after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the invasion of Ukraine is seen by many as an attempt to achieve that goal by "reclaiming" lost territory.

Russia's economy appears to have weathered sanctions imposed by the West over the war. Its oil and natural gas trade with China, India and the Middle East was robust in the past year, and there has been significantly more trade in the rouble after a decade-long push for de-dollarisation.

Sergey Lukonin, head of the China economics and politics sector at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations in Moscow, said Russia had long had a foreign policy of "turning to the East" and started to consolidate ties with Global South nations around the 2010s.

The Global South represents "an opportunity to avoid anti-Russian sanctions and maintain the dynamics of economic development", according to Lukonin.

He said Russia wanted to leverage multilateral platforms like Brics, the SCO, Asean and the EAEU so they could "theoretically" become the "analogues of existing international institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund".

At a meeting in Brazil in February, Brics finance ministers and central bank governors discussed Russia's proposal to create a digital settlement and payment platform as part of a "reform of the international monetary and financial system".

Lukonin said China and Russia shared similar positions on cooperating with the Global South, and the difference was "in semitones".

"In the current geopolitical situation, Russia's interaction with the countries of the Global South has almost no alternative," he said.

"It seems to me that for China, the Global South is rather a strengthening of its negotiating position in strategic rivalry with the United States. That is, China can balance between the Global North and the Global South."

Guy Burton, a visiting fellow with the Sectarianism, Proxies and De-sectarianisation project at Lancaster University, said Russia's policy on the Global South was likely to be more defensive than that of China since its agenda remained dominated by the Ukraine war.

"If they're feeling strong and confident at home, that also places them in a stronger position to have a more sort of robust and active foreign policy abroad," he said. "If they're feeling a bit more vulnerable and a bit more exposed, their foreign policy is perhaps going to be more defensive."

Duben of Jilin University said many Global South nations were wary about China and Russia's motives.

"This does not herald the imminent formation of a China- and Russia-led Global South anti-Western alliance," he said.

"The Global South is an extremely heterogeneous grouping, comprising countless different nations. Leading powers of the Global South, such as India or Brazil, have their own interests and agendas and try to pursue a more neutral policy path with continued strong links with the US and its allies."

The Ukraine war could drive more division in the Global South, Duben said, with many nations uneasy about Russia's invasion, especially former Soviet states that fear they might "become targets of Russian territorial expansionism in the future".

"This will likely be one of the factors dampening the enthusiasm of at least some states in the Global South to become part of a more substantial grouping that is united under some form of Sino-Russian joint leadership."

According to Burton, Beijing and Moscow's efforts to use Brics as a counterweight to the West might not work as the members are "not all friends", such as Saudi Arabia and Iran.

The Middle Eastern rivals were among the six nations invited to join Brics last year. But while Tehran has already taken up membership, Riyadh has said it is still considering whether to accept the invitation.

"[Riyadh wants] to see ... what are you going to do about Iran in the Brics," Burton said. "The Saudis ... maybe they just want to keep their options open."

Saudi Arabia has been seen to be using its close ties with China and Russia as leverage over the US, which was frustrated by Riyadh's move to cut oil output and also Beijing brokering the deal for a rapprochement between Riyadh and Tehran.

Riyadh also aligns with Beijing and Moscow's position in support of a Palestinian state. That is despite Washington's push for a normalisation of ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel that could bring Riyadh more US security guarantees.

China and Russia have stepped up criticism of the US over its support of Israel, taking a position on the Gaza conflict that aligns with that taken by most of the Global South, which is more sympathetic to the Palestinians.

Gustavo de Carvalho, a senior researcher on African governance and diplomacy at the South African Institute of International Affairs, said the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza had served as "a wake-up call for the Global South".

"[It highlights] how global powers engage with us and the risks of being drawn into competitions that do not directly concern us," he said.

De Carvalho said China's long-standing commitment to Africa and the Global South made it "a key actor in the decision-making process" while Russia was more of a "newcomer".

"[Russia's] narratives are still evolving and often contested. China is often seen under the lenses of pragmatism - it's big, it's powerful and can be helpful. Russia is still seen often under ideological lenses ... Russia is still rebuilding its connections almost from scratch."

China is now Africa's largest trading partner. Africa is also one of the main beneficiaries of belt and road funding, but critics say this has left some nations saddled with massive debts.

Russia has tried to boost ties with Africa since its relations with the West worsened after it annexed Crimea in 2014. It has become part of Moscow's narrative to counter the West since it invaded Ukraine. Last year, Putin hit out at the West for failing to guarantee food security for the continent when he hosted the second Russia-Africa summit. Russia is also a major arms exporter to Africa, but its trade with the continent is still far below that of China.

De Carvalho said that while African nations were interested in building relationships with both China and Russia, they were cautious about doing so because of fears they might become "a pawn or proxy in global disputes".

"For the Global South, the idea of being non-aligned is not about neutrality," he said. "It is about maintaining autonomy and options."

This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2024 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

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