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The Global South not choosing sides, but asserting its rightful position

Source: chinadiplomacy.org.cn | 2025-04-30
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The Global South not choosing sides, but asserting its rightful position

By Zoon Ahmed Khan

Lead: Xi's three-country tour of Vietnam, Malaysia and Cambodia signaled a profound shift extending well beyond Southeast Asia: a clear move from merely responding to external pressures toward a new era where nations exercise strategic autonomy, engage in pragmatic diplomacy and strengthen South-South cooperation.

When Chinese President Xi Jinping touched down in Vietnam on April 14 — starting his first overseas trip of 2025 — his presence was much more than a diplomatic ritual. It was a reminder: In a fragmented world, China and other Global South countries are no longer just spectators to geopolitical rivalries. They are actors — asserting their right to peace, stability and development, resisting binaries and forging new paths on their own terms.

Xi's three-country tour of Vietnam, Malaysia and Cambodia — all ASEAN members, Belt and Road partners and longtime neighbors with growing common interests — was a powerful testament to China's commitment to win-win cooperation. The visit also signaled a profound shift extending well beyond Southeast Asia: a clear move from merely responding to external pressures toward a new era where nations exercise strategic autonomy, engage in pragmatic diplomacy and strengthen South-South cooperation.

And the question we must raise today is no longer "Whose side are you on, China or the U.S.?" It's "Why are you still asking such a question?"

Vietnam: Strategic sovereignty, not subservience

The Trump administration's economic policy toward Vietnam are designed to pressure the country to choose between Beijing and Washington, even when it runs counter to its economic interests. However, for countries in the Global South, especially those with scars from Cold War coercion and conflict, such tactics are unlikely to succeed.

Even starker is the contrast between what Beijing and Washington offer. China signed 45 agreements with Vietnam covering needed infrastructure, such as rail links and supply chains, during Xi's visit, while Trump threatens the country with economic punishment. As one Vietnamese analyst put it, "We know our geography. What we choose is how we navigate it." And Beijing understands this. The polarizing, zero-sum approach is not only outdated but also tone-deaf. 

This isn't about ideology. It's about fundamental principles governing state-to-state relations and about whether or not the law of the jungle should be allowed to prevail. Vietnam is not a proxy — it's a sovereign state and a Global South member that has its right to development and choices.

Malaysia: Leveraging the middle position

In Malaysia, Xi found a warm welcome — and a different kind of partnership. Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has been explicit: China is Malaysia's "most significant trading partner," and also a "rational, strong and reliable" partner. The numbers support this: in 2024, China exported $101.46 billion worth of goods to Malaysia — nearly four times the $27.7 billion from the United States.

Malaysia isn't interested in choosing sides, either. It's interested in ensuring that its economy isn't crushed under the weight of geopolitical instability. And here China — the stable and dependable neighbor — is a far more valuable partner than the powerful country on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.

The East Coast Rail Link — a $10 billion Belt and Road Initiative project — is yet another example of how it is China and not the U.S. that is willing and capable of enabling the country's untapped potentials.

Cambodia: Deepening ties with Beijing

In Cambodia, China's presence is so visible it feels architectural. From the Phnom Penh-Sihanoukville Expressway to the textile factories across the country, investment by Chinese companies is as much about connectivity as output.

Trade between the two countries reached $17.83 billion in 2024 — making China Cambodia's largest trading partner for the 13th consecutive year. The U.S., by contrast, imported $12.7 billion of goods from Cambodia the same year, but exported far less in return.

Cambodia isn't naive — Beijing's commitment and diplomacy have made it a partner not of necessity, as many Western analysts would like to believe — but enthusiasm. The U.S., by contrast, offers criticism and conditionality. In a region that still remembers the lectures of the Cold War, this distinction lands heavily.

This isn't about choosing sides. It's about choosing dignity and development.

Viewing Xi's Southeast Asia visit as a "soft power play" or a counterstroke to U.S. tariffs could not be further from reality.

In the eyes of the other members of the Global South, China's rise is not just a geopolitical shift. It's a practical one representing infrastructure, financing and access to technology. These are not ideological offerings. They are developmental lifelines. What China has done — and what the West often fails to do — is answer to the material aspirations of nations that have spent decades demanding a seat at the table, only to be told to wait.

The world isn't splitting. It's rebalancing.

What Xi's visit made clear — though rarely said outright — is that the Global South is no longer interested in being managed and manipulated. The Bandung Spirit of 1955, when African and Asian leaders gathered to assert their sovereignty and dignity and their right to development and peace, echoes louder than ever.

ASEAN, BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) — these aren't just acronyms. They're structures of peace and development. They're the mechanisms through which the Global South is rebalancing global power — not by confronting the West, but by refusing to be manipulated by it.

Xi's message wasn't "choose China." It was "choose your own path — and we'll help pave it."

The Global South is not simply rallying behind China, one of its own members. It is asserting its right to peace, stability and development — and discovering that, in many cases, it finally has choices.

The old binaries — "free versus authoritarian," aligned versus non-aligned, developed versus developing — are no longer adequate to explain today's multipolar realities. ASEAN, BRICS and the SCO are not anti-Western clubs. They are expressions of the will to achieve peace, stability and prosperity.

And Southeast Asian nations, as important part of the Global South, are now capable of asking: What is the U.S. offering that we actually need?

Washington's opportunity — if it wants one

If the U.S. wants to remain relevant in Southeast Asia, it needs to do more than "countering China." It needs to respond to the region. That means listening, investing, trading fairly, and supporting development on the terms of those being developed.

Most of all, it means recognizing that countries like Vietnam, Malaysia and Cambodia are not being "won over" by China. They are making strategic decisions based on opportunity and the basic norms governing state-to-state relations— and right now, China is showing up.

As one Vietnamese official reportedly quipped, "China builds roads. The U.S. holds press conferences."

What comes next? The age of mutual terms

As economist Ha-Joon Chang once noted, "kicking away the ladder" has long been a Western habit — denying others the same path to development that Western powers once used themselves. But that ladder is now being rebuilt elsewhere. And many are climbing.

If the U.S. continues to frame global relationships through binaries — China or the U.S., "democracy" or "autocracy" — it will find fewer takers than it expects.

The world is no longer willing to sabotage its potential for someone else's ideology.

And the countries that remember Bandung? They know the cost of waiting. This time, they're moving first and fast, with a view to strengthening South-South cooperation and promoting world peace and prosperity.

Zoon Ahmed Khan is a research fellow at the Center for China and Globalization.

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