China Power | Diplomacy | East Asia

China’s Bid to Define the ‘Global South’

Beijing has adopted its own, quite different, definition of the term.

In the leadup to the U.S.-China summit in September 2026, President Xi Jinping attended the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, and the BRICS summit in Delhi. He also visited the Middle East — all between August and September. What is notable is that in speeches delivered at both the SCO and BRICS summits, Xi made heavy use of the term “Global South.” This reflects China’s positioning of the SCO and BRICS as gatherings of the Global South, even though Russia and Turkey are among their members. How, precisely, does China understand and deploy this term “Global South” (全球南方, Quanqiu Nanfang)?

In academic usage, “Global South” originally carried the meaning that “South” issues exist within developed countries too, and that the North-South divide should not be understood in spatially separate terms; South issues are, rather, global in character. From around 2020, however, the term began to be used differently in international forums. In particular, following the war in Ukraine, a view spread — especially in Western countries — that sharply delineated the advanced democracies against China and Russia, drawing an axis of confrontation between the developed world and China, Russia (plus Iran and North Korea), and treating the remaining countries as the “Global South.” China responded to this by becoming very wary of the term, viewing “Global South” as a Western-originated concept designed to drive a wedge between China and the developing world. China’s self-identification has been as a developing country —indeed, as the representative of the developing world. For this reason, it was unwilling to accept a term that would separate China from developing countries.

Despite this, the term “Global South” became increasingly prevalent globally. In particular, when India hosted the “Voice of Global South Summit” online on January 12 and 13, 2023, and did not invite China, this appears to have come as a significant shock to Beijing. Yet even after the “Voice of Global South Summit,” Chinese criticism of the term continued. The shift came in the period following the enactment of the Foreign Relations Law on June 28, 2023. That law, in Article 4, calls for upholding the five principles [of peaceful coexistence], and also uses the term “developing country” (发展中国家) in two places, reaffirming China’s identity as a developing country.

From July 2023, Foreign Minister Wang Yi suddenly began using the term “Global South” at international conferences, albeit with quotation........

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