Turning point bodes well for Global South

The global geopolitical transition to a multipolar world is driven by the emergence of the countries of the South, the rise of China and the failure of Western modernity.

It is necessary to understand the history behind the latest geopolitical inflections and the current scenario. More than three decades ago, the end of the Cold War (1947-91), identified by Washington as the harbinger of a "New American Century", pointed to a unipolar and unilateral world, which seemed inevitable.

On the one hand, the wars and military conflicts waged by the United States and its European allies confirmed the political strength of the Western military-industrial complex, which, associated with dominant economic interests, continues to interfere in different regions of the world. It also indicates how much the Western modernity project depends on the exercise of war.

On the other hand, the succession of economic and financial crises and their arbitrary management, as in 2001, 2008 and the current economic turbulence, indicate the end of the period of prosperity and compromise the continuity of the world order. At the same time, the US development model has proved to be increasingly unsustainable and uneven.

The emergence of the peoples of the developing Global South converges with the transition of the dynamic center of the world from the West to the East, shifting the old economic axis from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. It should be remembered that in the 1940s and 1970s, social revolutions, national liberation processes and the various conferences that took place aroused the first feelings of unity among the peoples of the Global South, as they began to question the political and cultural hegemony of the Global North.

For the peoples of the Global South, the current rise of China has contributed decisively to the establishment of new development bases, which have allowed for a profound inflection in the trajectory of the world in at least two fundamental aspects.

The first refers to the transition since the 1990s from unipolarity, imposed after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, to global multipolarity. To this end, the establishment of multilateral institutional frameworks is capable of promoting consensus and convergence, which are incompatible with the imposition of wars based on the protagonism of the military-industrial complex.

The second aspect is coherent with the definition of global development that is compatible with the environmental sustainability of planet Earth. Through the process of digital transformation, people-centered development allows the use of available resources to be connected to the fusion of cyber and physical spaces with knowledge-intensive institutional structures.

In this global inflection, China's role is important due to its concrete economic actions in Asia and Africa, among the Arab states, and with Russia as well as Brazil and other Latin American countries. Given this, the construction of a multipolar future compatible with the autonomy and sovereignty potential of the nations of the Global South depends on people and their governments taking advantage of the new global geopolitical reality.

In short, moving away from Western assumptions of modernity requires another form of globalization based on multipolarity, planning, cooperation and integration of peoples, with a focus on combating inequality and poverty, and achieving peace and positive results for all. The Brazil-China partnership is strategic for this new scenario.

The author, who is president of the Lula Institute of Brazil, contributed this article to China Watch, a think tank powered by China Daily. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.