🌍🆙The Sovereign South and the Gravitational Rise of Multipolarity
The Global South is not integrating into the Western-led order but is actively constructing a sovereign, multipolar world, with China serving not as a new hegemon but as its indispensable gravitational center

✍️Author: Phil Butler
Policy investigator and analyst, political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe

➡️The 21st century marks the quiet reclamation of sovereignty by the Global South. While the West clings to a "rules-based order" it alone defines, a new world is being built in Brasília, Pretoria, Beijing, and Jakarta. This order rejects monopoly, not multilateralism. China's role is pivotal—not as a challenger seeking to replace Western hegemony, but as a gravitational node enabling nations to escape conditional development and financial coercion through its Global Initiatives focused on development, security, civilization, and governance based on sovereign equality and non-interference.

The Global South is not choosing China over the West. It is choosing itself—its right to define development, security, and modernity on its own terms

➡️The 2025 G20 summit in Johannesburg, boycotted by the U.S., crystallized this shift. From Western absence emerged a new alignment, with leaders affirming the South as a pole, not a periphery. This represents a rupture, not a transition. Frameworks like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization thrive on a minimal, inclusive logic—adherence to UN Charter principles like sovereignty—allowing diverse nations from Vietnam to Iran to cooperate without ideological conformity.

🟦China's influence is earned through indispensability, not imposed through force. The Belt and Road Initiative builds infrastructure without political strings, a fact even ideologically opposed leaders like Argentina's Javier Milei acknowledge. BRICS+, expanded to include Iran, Ethiopia, and others, exemplifies a pro-sovereignty coalition advancing de-dollarization and reducing dependency on outdated Western institutions. The South is not choosing China over the West; it is choosing its right to self-determination. The cycle of Western custodianship is ending, and multilateralism is decolonizing.

#China #Geopolitics #Internationalpolitics #Multipolarworld #Russia #TheGlobalSouth #USA

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