“The world has enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed” — Mahatma Gandhi
IN 2024, the number of people living on less than $6.85 (about P397) a day in the entire world is estimated at 3.5 billion, unchanged due to population growth from the year 1990, according to a report of the World Bank Group.
Modern agricultural and industrial technology allows mankind to produce all the food, energy, and basic necessities for the entire 8.2 billion population of Earth today, but in most places in the Global South, these capacities have not been attained.
The reason all the progress of mankind has not reached close to half of the world’s population today is the bottleneck in global governance, constricted by the politics of greed and residual impact of the age imperialism, colonialism, and neo-colonialism.
Global governance today represented by the United Nations centering on the Security Council is locked in the constant obstructionism by political dispensations of the Global North, seeking to maintain hegemony while the Global South seeks emancipation of all nations.
It is for this reason that today, the Global South must make its determined effort to reform global governance in and around the United Nations system reinforced by alternative governance mechanism that will ensure multipolar participation.
The 21st century has seen the emergence of a strong Global South led by the largest developing economy of China; China’s economy has become the engine of global economic sustainability, contributing 30 percent of the global GDP.
Successfully building up its national economy, China showed its global economic responsibility in 2008 when it helped the West’s survive their self-made financial crash by pump priming the world economy. In 2012, China launched its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) that jumped-started the economic upliftment of the Global South.
The economic empowerment of China led to initiatives to support the economies of the Global South thru partnerships and various mechanisms like BRICS and its supporting institutions such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and New Development Bank (NDB).
The BRI and BRICS have become rising alternatives for global economic and development management systems. They are the new avenues for the Global South to assert and take dynamic cooperative actions to realize their common dreams.
BRICS taking off
The Brazil, Russia, India, China and, later, South Africa partnership (BRICS) has a long history, from its initial meetings in 2006 and 2009 and in 2011, when South Africa joined. Everything finally congealed in the 2017 and 2022 BRICS Summits in China and in Kazan, Russia this 2024 that saw its member states and partners accounting to 31 percent of global GDP and covering 42 percent of the world’s population.
The BRICS’ 2024 ‘Kazan Declaration’ has set the course for a new global governance with its call for:
A multipolar world order; Support for United Nations’ reforms to increase its democracy and representation in the Security Council;
Creation of a new investment platform using the New Development Bank; Creation of new, independent cross-border settlement system; Support for alternative currencies in the union’s currency reserve pool;
Reform of the Bretton Woods institutions and increasing contribution of developing economies;
Developed countries to fulfil obligations to help needy countries; Prevention of arms race in space.
While some Western countries continue to criticize BRICS, the Global South is investing wholeheartedly its attention and efforts to pursue global reforms and generation of its cooperative power and its impact on global governance both in the immediate and long-term future.
BRICS is on the road to opening up the world to the new horizon of global freedom from the past era of Western controlled world to an age of Forever Peace and Prosperity, with its growing intra-BRICS trade, their growing trade in local currencies and the opening up of new trade routes, most of them thru the pathways created by the BRI.
The Belt and Road Initiative grows
The inauguration in November 2024 of the $3.6-billion China-funded Chancay Port in Peru is among the most significant Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects that has networked the rest of the globe, from Southeast Asia to South Asia, to West Asia and Europe, to one of its earliest beneficiaries, Africa, Oceania and now, Latin America.
The BRI has been breathtaking in its foresight and vision, and in its courageous confidence to overcome the expected challenges posed by heretofore extremely conflict-stricken and unstable parts of the world. It has created its own path thru a global network of railways, ports, water and power, technology, and telecommunications infrastructures.
The obstacles appeared daunting but through the transcendent optimism of China’s leadership who aspired to create a better world not only for itself, China pushed for a ‘Community of Shared Future for Mankind’ that enabled and mobilized the majority of the Global South to make this shared future a reality today.
The BRI made humanity’s dream of peace and prosperity for all a reality; it continues to expand as the participating countries receive the benefits of modernization and innovative technologies arising from China’s own heightened technological development, economic stability and its ever-growing market.
President Xi’s Three Global Initiatives
To serve as a guide to the global community and the majority in the pursuit of the Community of Shard Future for Mankind and the assertion of the Global South’s engagement in global governance, President Xi Jinping of China has set forth, in the course of the past five years, three global initiatives for the attainment of this common effort.
The Global Development Initiative (GDI) was introduced by President Xi at the 76th Session of the UN General Assembly in 2021, advising the world to engage all nations in the process of improving economic and social well-being of peoples around the globe, uplift nations through wealth creation through infrastructure and trade linkages.
The Global Security Initiative (GSI) was put forth by President Xi at the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference in 2022, upholding a vision of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security, respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries and adhering to non-interference in internal affairs, summed up in the motto of “Indivisible Security For All.”
Finally, the Global Civilization Initiative (GCI) to end the wrong notion of ‘Clash of Civilizations’ harbored by some Western cultures who are hiding under their racist undercurrents that only produced “forever wars.”
The GCI instead calls for a clear vision of the millennial human history and its variety of civilizations and the respective contributions of each in promoting continuous and ever heightening development of human civilization.
The future built on sharing
For this year-ender, we recall the words of the great Mohandas ‘Mahatma’ Gandhi, who reminded everyone that “The world has enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed.” We also add the Christian Christmas carol call, “Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men.”
It has taken one of the oldest living civilizations and the modern ideologies of the West in the form of scientific socialism with Chinese characteristics to formulate the analytical and ideological basis for constructing the theory and practice of 21st century global governance, its principles, structures, and institutions, to propose a program of action to change human history for the better centered on “forever peace and prosperity.”
It is of vital interest to the Global South, the Global Majority, to join in and put its growing might behind the great project of building that Community of Shared Future for Mankind.,
We must fight for it with our combined might and ensure the continuing development, security, stability, and harmony of human civilizations for all time.