While the term lacks clarity, it is clear that Beijing must be included in family of developing countries

This photo taken on June 25, 2023 shows the Padma Bridge on the outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh. The bridge was undertaken by China Railway Major Bridge Engineering Group Co Ltd and opened to public in June 2022. (PHOTO / XINHUA)

Developed countries are generally in the Northern Hemisphere, while most developing countries are in the Southern Hemisphere. Therefore, “North” has become synonymous with “developed countries” and “South” with “developing countries”.

North-South relations therefore refer to the relations between or among developed countries and developing countries, whereas South-South cooperation is the cooperation between or among developing countries.

This understanding has become an international consensus. Even former leader Deng Xiaoping said in the mid-1980s that the international order was characterized by four words: “East-West” and “North-South”, with East-West relations referring to the relationship between socialist and capitalist countries and North-South to the relationship between developed and developing countries.

In addition to the word “South”, there is the term “Global South”. This is generally considered to have been coined by United States political activist Carl Oglesby in 1969. He used the term in an article about the Vietnam War published in the Catholic magazine Commonweal. He said that the Vietnam War was the inevitable result of hundreds of years of “dominance over the Global South” by the Global North.

What is surprising is that “Global South” has attracted unprecedented attention this year. The popularity of this phrase may be related to three conferences. The first was the Voice of the Global South Summit in India in January, to which the host invited 120 countries, with the notable exclusion of China. The second was the Munich Security Conference in February, whose opening “town hall” was titled “Recalibrating the Compass: South-North Cooperation”. The third was the G7 Summit in Hiroshima, Japan, in May, which set two agendas, one of which was “Outreach to the Global South”. Some developing countries attended this summit but China was again not invited.

Despite the hyping up of the phrase Global South, it must be pointed out that there is no consensus on its definition. While some believe it is identical to the South — that is, developing countries, underdeveloped countries, poor countries, or backward countries — others argue that like the outdated phrase “Third World”, it has strong political connotations reflecting the nature of the world order divided into the developed and developing countries.

Still, others say that while the term “developing countries” reflects the individuality of these nations, “Global South” pays more attention to them as a collective body and also highlights the multiple impacts of globalization on developing countries.

Due to the lack of a well-recognized definition, people often use the term Global South according to their own whims or their own understanding of it. The US, in particular, is exploiting this lack of an agreed-upon definition in an attempt to expel China from the Global South family. 

As a matter of fact, when Donald Trump was president, the US was already claiming that China was not a developing country. For instance, in the Presidential Memorandum on Reforming the Status of Developing Countries in the World Trade Organization issued on July 26, 2019, the US announced that it has never accepted China’s developing country status in the WTO.

Needless to say, the US will not succeed with this endeavor, because the international status of a country is not decided by Washington but by the international community as a whole. In a report titled “Forging a Global South”, released in December 2004, the United Nations Development Programme had included China in its list of more than 130 Global South countries.

It is true that, as its economy is growing rapidly, China’s international status is increasing day by day. However, China’s identity as a developing country has not changed. In the foreseeable future, it will remain a member of the large family of developing nations and will continue to make contributions to the common prosperity of developing countries by promoting South-South cooperation. Therefore, a Global South without China is a false proposition.

The author is a distinguished professor at Macau University of Science and Technology. 

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.