The following is the text of Dr. Jenny Clegg’s speech to our conference celebrating the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, held at London’s Bolivar Hall on September 28.
Jenny argues that now, as a wider war looms over us, it is imperative that leftists in the West understand the interconnections between multipolarity, the Global South and China so as to grasp what is going on in the world.
According to her analysis, for the Global South, China provides a model of successful development and the eradication of poverty; its vast market and investment resources puts it at the centre of South-South economic cooperation; whilst its diplomacy fosters unity and promotes pathways towards peace.
Whilst not skirting complexities and problematic factors, she notes that in the next few years, much depends on the BRICS+ holding together.
“The litmus test of BRICS+ right now is their independent foreign policies no matter how hesitant and unreliable… Now is not the time for sitting on the fence, picking and choosing what is right and wrong: that is for the utopian socialists. We have to seize the politics of the moment… if we in Britain can orientate especially our peace movement towards the Global South we will be doing something.”
Jenny is an independent writer and researcher, specialising in China’s development and international role; and a former Senior Lecturer in Asia Pacific Studies at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLAN). She is the author of ‘China’s Global Strategy: towards a multipolar world’
(Pluto Press, 2009) and ‘Storming the Heavens – Peasants and Revolution in China, 1925-1949 – from a Marxist perspective’ (Manifesto Press, 2024).
There’s more talk now in the Western mainstream about multipolarity, some acknowledgement at least that the world is beginning to change. But 15 years ago, when I was researching for my book on ‘China’s Global Strategy’, I really struggled to find any mention of multipolarity in Western literature. Yet at the time there was a great deal of debate amongst Chinese scholars about where China fitted into the multipolar trend.
Today mainstream views see a few random middle powers – Türkiye, Mexico, Malaysia, Australia – starting to play a more important role. The Chinese view, from a historical and materialist perspective, has long recognised multipolarisation as a rebalancing of world power driven by the rise of the Global South.
Now, as a wider war looms over us, it is imperative that leftists in the West understand the interconnections between multipolarity, the Global South and China so as to grasp what is going on in the world.
Amidst multiplying crises, Global South countries are increasingly looking to each other rather than the West. Given their experiences of vaccine apartheid, high interest rates exacerbating debt, inflation from the Ukraine war, the failure of rich nations to cough up on climate change, Global South countries have every reason to come together as a more vocal force for peace and development.
South-South networks are proliferating; the objective conditions for multipolarisation are unfolding – India and Brazil have risen into the top 10 world economies soon to be followed by Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria displacing G7 members. And subjective consciousness is shifting: one after another, countries across the developing world refused to take sides in the Ukraine conflict – now they are united in horror of Israel’s genocide and in anger and disgust at the double standards of the West’s complicity.
Of course, past experience has shown Global South collective efforts are liable to succumb to imperialist division as when their 1974 call for a New International Economic order fell apart by the 1980s.
Today, the role of China as by far the largest developing state is critical.
For the Global South, China provides a model of successful development and the eradication of poverty; its vast market and investment resources puts it at the centre of South-South economic cooperation; whilst its diplomacy fosters unity and promotes pathways towards peace.
For sure there are problems – reproducing the pattern of colonial trade of raw materials for manufactured goods is hard to change in a short time. Investment projects through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) have not always been the best or wisest, but even if as many as 40 percent run into difficulties – as some critics claim – that means 60 percent are working and are making a difference.
Now China is opening a path for developing countries to leapfrog into a green and digitised future. Throwing itself into the growth of new quality productive forces domestically, China is becoming the indispensable power in the global green transition.
Deals with China in general offer something stable to hold onto in an anarchic world economy. Against the colonial pattern, the recent China-Africa summit saw important commitments which will amount to one million jobs for African people.
Now, catching the new momentum in the Global South, China has accelerated its diplomatic activity in forums such as the SCO, the G77+, the BRICS+, the China-Africa and other such forums. Its global initiatives on development, security and civilisation carry forward the basic principles of the UN Charter building on the five principles of peaceful coexistence and the 1955 Bandung agreement.
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