The Global South does not exist, and, indeed, the West keeps insisting on this. There is too little coherence among these countries, which comprises groups that are not true alliances, such as the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), a mere collection of initials. There are too few shared values around what must be considered good governance or a universally preferable type of regime. Yet this non-existent Global South was meeting in China through the first week of September. In two stages, Chinese President Xi Jinping hosted the powers that have been repelled by the world order forged by the United States, one that is now devalued and faltering. While the only common denominator among them may be their rejection of that order, it is an effective one.
On Monday, September 1, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization showed the diplomatic version of this in Tianjin, where the focus was solely on cooperation and goodwill, with the summit's host calling for "equal and orderly multipolarization of the world." One guest was Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was shocked by the trade war declared against him by Donald Trump and irritated by the US president's claims that he had ended the last military confrontation between India and Pakistan by himself.
For Washington, which had regularly courted New Delhi to counter Beijing in the Indo-Pacific, the meetings in China were a cost-free warning. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who has still not been invited to the White House, was also in Tianjin, alongside some 20 world leaders, including the Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian.
The military parade held in Beijing on September 3, meanwhile, was intended to show that a "just order" does not preclude shows of force. In the stands, the Chinese president was joined by the North Korean strongman, Kim Jong Un, and, of course, his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, who was due to be in China for much of the week. Putin could not have sustained his war of aggression against Ukraine for more than three years now without ammunition and personnel from North Korea, Iranian drones or Beijing's support, particularly in the technological field, even if the Chinese authorities have taken care not to overtly cross the line into co-belligerence.
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