Erik Green & Meia Nouwens
Since his inauguration in January, United States President Donald Trump’s controversial decisions to cut US Agency for International Development funding and, more recently, introduce 10% tariffs on over 180 countries have risked alienating many US allies. The United States’ standing in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa could be particularly damaged at a time when China continues to leverage narratives of a Western (and in particular US) decline in power to further its agenda. This has sparked questions over whether China can exploit this opportunity to strengthen relationships with states in these regions and fill the space vacated by the US under the Trump administration.
China has already made considerable efforts to cultivate support amongst those nations often labelled as part of the ‘Global South’, utilising a range of economic, political and socio-cultural approaches. Since 2017, it has outlined an alternative world order that can appeal to Global South countries. To promote this order, Beijing has drawn upon its decades of infrastructure investment and loans to much of the Global South, but diplomacy also plays a crucial part in Beijing’s efforts. From 2023 onwards, Beijing has engaged in an increasing number of bilateral meetings with heads of state from across these regions. This not only demonstrates the importance placed by China’s senior leadership on its Global South diplomacy but also the extent of the relationships and support that it has already cultivated. Notably, in addition to heads-of-state meetings, the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Military Commission (CMC) also plays a significant defence-diplomacy role to bolster support for China’s Global Security Initiative, launched in 2022.
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