Jenny Clegg: Orienting our peace movement towards the Global South

The following is the text of Dr. Jenny Clegg’s speech to our conference celebrating the 75^th 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.

China brings to this diplomacy a vast experience of resisting imperialism. It was in fact the first country in the Global South to defeat colonialism as Britain, France and the US were forced to end extraterritorial privileges in 1943.

China’s emerging role in dispute settlement and peace-building is starting to make a real difference, denying US leverage to interfere within the Global South: the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation has helped keep the US military out of Central Asia; the Saudi Arabia-Iran agreement shifted dynamics in the Middle East – the US now doing its best to undermine this trend towards regional unity; China brought together the 14 Palestinian factions, and its proposal with Brazil on the Russia-Ukraine conflict has brought the weight of support of 110 countries.

Then there’s China’s emphasis on dialogue between civilisations – the first priority in Xi Jinping’s recent speech to African leaders: suffice to say strengthening cultural confidence is essential in addressing what Frantz Fanon called the colonisation of the mind.

Looking into the future, as the 2030s decade sees more countries in the Global South getting stronger, the gap between North and South can be narrowed, so conceivably transitioning into a more managed phase of multipolarity in the 2040s as Western-centrism declines and relations between major powers readjust.

The next five years serve as a critical passage into a more equitable international balance and it is this that makes the present situation so fraught with the acute competition between the US and China at the heart of it.

Biden called the 2020s the ‘decisive decade’: now halfway through, as the US sees its power slipping away, the drive to war – pitting a global NATO against the so-called deadly quartet – Russia-China-North Korea-Iran – is the one last chance for the US to stay on top. If we can just get through to 2030 without a world war…

How matters are settled in Europe and the Middle East will have a far-reaching influence on the overall world balance of power – and this is what makes the conflicts so drawn out. China’s quiet diplomacy aims at placing the UN back into the driving seat on questions of war and peace – a position usurped by the US after WW2.

So again, I repeat: as world war threatens, it is imperative that peace activists and socialists grasp the interconnections within multipolarity and recognise its phases. We will end up otherwise on the wrong side of history.

In the next few years, much depends on the BRICS+ holding together. It is easy to see why supporting the BRICS should be seen as problematic for the left – with leaders and states like Modi, Bolsonaro, Iran, UAE, Egypt, and Putin’s military excursion into Ukraine.  Certainly, autocratic regimes are a weak link, their instability and regional disputes creating openings for US interference.

However, some on the left misrepresent multipolarity as a new round of inter-imperialist rivalry driven by the BRICS’ pursuit of regional hegemony.  For sure, individually, ambitions of national aggrandisement are at play amongst some members of the BRICS, but collectively, under pressure as international crises multiply, they are cooperating to find alternative solutions not least to the dollar trading system. Besides, smaller countries within the Global South, rather than succumbing to subordinate positions under regional BRICS hegemonism, are increasing their own collective activism.

The litmus test of BRICS+ right now is their independent foreign policies no matter how hesitant and unreliable.  We should learn from the example of the Communist Party of China, which after 1937 bit the bullet to stick to the united front with the Kuomintang, so long as they were prepared to resist Japan, even as Chiang Kai-shek continued to bury communists alive.

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; we have to recognise that we cannot solve our problems just on our own: the utter failure of the Western-led world on Palestine screams for a new international order –  if we in Britain can orientate especially our peace movement towards the Global South we will be doing something.