When Chinese Premier Li Qiang visited Malaysia in June, he did not need to defend China’s growing projections of economic and military might in Southeast Asia. Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim did it for him: China was a “true friend” whose dominance should not be feared, said Anwar.
The following month, Malaysia applied to join the BRICS grouping of countries, which Beijing has sought to expand into a coalition of developing nations. China’s efforts to provide an alternative to Western hegemony, Anwar said, “brought us a glimmer of hope that there are checks and balances in the world.”
Increasingly alienated by developed countries allied with Washington and Brussels, Beijing has pursued a deliberate campaign to court nations in the developing world or what is sometimes called the Global South — not just by funding infrastructure projects but by providing security assistance and geopolitical backing at international forums.
These efforts are gaining traction, say analysts studying China’s foreign policy.
“In a lot of the capitals around the world, they’re now thinking first of Beijing, and then of Washington,” said Oriana Skylar Mastro, a center fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Some in the West have overlooked China’s efforts or dismissed them as contrived, missing that these efforts have had an effect, Mastro said.
Speaking before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week, U.S. State Department Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell acknowledged as much: China has outpaced the United States in engaging the Global South, he said. “We need to do more,” he added.
Along with Russia, China is seeking to create a multipolar world, offering an alternative order to one led by the United States. While scaling back on its controversial Belt and Road Initiative — generous loans and investments that used to be the linchpin of its efforts to build influence abroad — it has ramped up political and security engagement with countries that have felt neglected by or at odds with the U.S. strategic agenda.
This includes places like Malaysia, a majority-Muslim country that has condemned the U.S. involvement in the Middle East crisis; Cambodia, where an authoritarian government has rebuffed Washington’s perceived moralizing over human rights; and the Solomon Islands, where the United States rushed to reopen its embassy last year after China inked a security pact. This also includes various middle- to low-income countries — which South Africa has called “bystander countries” — that blame soaring food and energy prices on Western sanctions on Russia.
China has sent high-level officials on repeated visits to these countries. It backed a bid by the African Union to be admitted as a member of the Group of 20 countries and has called for more seats on the U.N. Security Council to go to developing nations.
China has increased joint military drills with smaller militaries — last week kicking off a large-scale naval exercise with Tanzania and Mozambique — and carried out training for police in countries like the Solomon Islands and Kiribati.
It has cast itself as a global mediator, brokering relations between rival Palestinian factions and drafting a peace plan for Ukraine that it says has the support of 110 countries.
What Beijing wants in return, analysts say, is greater legitimacy on the global stage and support for issues it cares about, such as quelling criticism of its persecution of Muslim Uyghurs and aggression toward Taiwan. (Beijing considers Taiwan, a self-governing democracy that has never been ruled by the Chinese Communist Party, part of its territory.)
At a United Nations human rights review this year, several developing countries — Bolivia, Burundi, Ethiopia and Cameroon — spoke in support of China as Chinese officials issued blanket denials of human rights violations in Tibet, Hong Kong and elsewhere.
Other countries — Malaysia, Suriname and Equatorial Guinea — recently vowed to support China’s efforts at “reunification” with Taiwan, going a step further than their previous acknowledgments of the one-China principle.
As the United States seeks to curtail economic dependence on China and isolate it geopolitically, China has come to see the Global South as vital for its future, said Tang Xiaoyang, chair of the department of international relations at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
It has been deliberate not only with prioritizing its relationship with developing nations but calibrating how it carries out these interactions, Tang said. “China understands the West’s arrogance and the weakness of the West’s approaches in developing countries,” he added.
Though it is considered by the World Bank to be an upper-middle-income country, with a GDP per capita of $12,614, China has sought to position itself as a member of the developing world, standing in solidarity with the poor and oppressed.
“We will never take the trodden path of colonial plundering, or the wrong path of seeking hegemony when one becomes strong,” Chinese leader Xi Jinping said during a speech in June. “Among the world’s major countries, China has the best track record with respect to peace and security.”
China has pushed to expand the BRICS grouping of emerging economies, which Chinese state-run media calls the “voice” of the Global South. Previously comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, the grouping this year added Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates, and is fielding interest from dozens of other countries, according to South African officials.
China is uniquely poised to help poor countries develop because of its “miracle” transformation over the last half-century, said Zhou Yongmei, a professor at Peking University’s Institute of South-South Cooperation and Development. Unlike the West, China refers to its efforts as “cooperation” more so than “aid,” said Zhou, adding: “They want to emphasize an equal relationship with the developing nations.”
But this claim of equality is more true in rhetoric than in actuality, said Joshua Eisenman, a professor of politics at the University of Notre Dame who researches China’s ties to Africa.
Across Africa, countries are struggling to make payments on Chinese-funded ports and dams approved under Belt and Road, raising allegations that China is using debt to exploit poor countries and pressure them into providing support. Chinese investors dominate key industries such as the extraction of minerals for electric vehicles, often at the expense of worker safety and environmental protection, say watchdog groups. And while China’s trade deficit with Africa is closing, it still exports far more than it imports.
“China has a steeply asymmetric relationship with every country in the Global South,” Eisenman said.
Moreover, while China has won support by “mobilizing” anti-American and anti-colonial sentiment in parts of the world, this strategy is limited by Beijing’s own projections of power, said Ja Ian Chong, an associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore who studies China’s influence.
In Southeast Asia, for example, at the same time China has brokered closer ties to Malaysia, it has alienated the Philippines with its campaign to dominate the South China Sea.
It’s also uncertain, said Chong, if China’s popularity will last as it reduces its large-scale investments and loans. Developing nations are “willing to play along if they get something in return. So the question is what is China able to deliver based on their diplomatic and other capabilities?” Chong said.
Two weeks ago, Xi met with José Ramos-Horta, president of East Timor, a small, impoverished and highly democratic country. In Beijing, Ramos-Horta told the South China Morning Post he doesn’t care for big power rivalries. If China can alleviate East Timor’s poverty and malnutrition, he would be “eternally grateful,” he said.
“If China can help our simple people,” Ramos-Horta said, “then China is my hero.”
Pei-lin Wu contributed to this report.