Cooperate or Compete?: What Chinese Analysts Think of India’s ‘Global South’ Leadership

Anushka Saxena

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Introduction

At present, India-China relations are at their lowest since the 1962 war. Naturally, this is reflected in the two sides’ engagement with the Global South. So far, India has hosted three ‘Voice of the Global South’ Summits (VOGSS) – in January and November 2023, and most recently, on August 17, 2024. At each VOGSS, India refrained from inviting China. Even though New Delhi communicated the decision to Beijing, consequent non-invitations added to Beijing’s ire, and made the issue competitive in the Chinese perspective. To hence respond to India’s decision, in the aftermath of each of these summits, Chinese analysts took to the papers to express why a Global South without China is a fallacious or a ‘pseudo-proposition’ – a term popularised by a September 2023 Global Times article on the VOGSS.

A “Fallacious” Global South

Three major patterns of note emerge from Chinese analysts’ contentions on the subject:

Firstly, Chinese analysts have repeatedly emphasised the vagueness of the concept of the ‘Global South’, in a bid to legitimise their position that China is as much a part of the Global South as India, or the other 120+ attendee countries of the VOGSS. As the above-referenced Global Times article states.