Sixty years after the Belgrade Non-Alignment Movement (NAM)
summit and sixty-six years after the Asian-African Conference was held
and “Bandung Spirit” launched, it can be undoubtedly concluded that
massive political decolonisation that resulted in tens of newly formed
independent states did not lead to their economic independence. These
significant anniversaries are also another opportunity to invigorate
the resurgence of the South-South cooperation and move it more
determinately toward the centrality of global political and economic
developments. Their decades-long joint strive toward development
brings hope of achievable decline of poverty, inequality, discrimination
and underdevelopment to the majority of nations and states and billions
of their citizens.
Asian and African countries alone make up more than half of the
United Nations Organization’s members but remain trapped at an
inferior position within the global economic system, run by rules and
international organisations created by their former foreign rulers. So
far, their united voice on the global stage has remained unheard in many
aspects, and their attempts to change the world system were evaded.
Although the economic performance of the two continents was 37.5%
of the world’s total1, and recently even has boosted the global economic
growth due to the individual strength of some of them, a considerable
majority of those states remained underdeveloped and firmly dependent
upon their former metropole’s economies. Additionally, absolute
income inequality between the North and the South has increased. It
will continue to grow in the medium term even if large parts of the
South experience catch-up growth.2 At the same time, during the whole
post-colonial period, resources of developing nations remained available
to the imperialist powers, as these former metropoles have maintained
economic dominance over their former colonies.
Some tools of imperial control managed to remain until today,
decades after the political liberalisation of these states. One of the most
striking pieces of evidence of the continuities of colonialism is the
existence of the CFA franc (franc of the French colonies in Africa), formed
in 1945 and still circulating in 14 African countries under the unchanged
founding rules and goals.3 As in other cases of imposed economic
“cooperation” of the South with its former imperial capitals, the main
purpose of such arrangements was to provide that former colonies’
economies serve the needs of the former metropole by providing raw
materials and other resources, open markets for their products and even
“safe havens” for the multinational corporations from the North in their
tax evasion pursue. Beyond the control of the currency and preserving
imperial monetary order—which also means taking away an important
part of the sovereign economic policy—loans were the most efficient
tools to subordinate indefinitely the former colony.
Economic growth achieved by rising economies contributed to a
somewhat blurred picture of the existing global divergence between
the North and the South and the enormous scope of existing global
inequality, and disparity in sharing global wealth and power. First of
all, China and to a lesser extent, India, contributed to the almost entire
convergence results. Additionally, all rising economies started to grow
from the very low base in their process of catch-up growth, which was
in addition “helped” by the simultaneous stagnation of middle-income
countries7. Moreover, the ratio of the incomes of the richest 10 per cent
to the poorest 10 per cent increased.
Although Asian rising economies were particularly successful
in taking their opportunities in the process of globalization, which
particularly goes for China and India, this did not change the collective
picture of the Global South and the undeniable disparity between
the North and the South. China played a unique role as it benefited
tremendously from joining the WTO and from globalization, but
it remained an exceptional case in every aspect.
China is considered
as a member of Group 77 by many of the members, but it does not
regard itself as such, despite cooperation with Group 77 and though
it pursues and propagates South-South cooperation and often presents
itself as a leading representative of the Third World countries. Being a
major power as seen by itself, by the world and proved by numerous
parameters, including being a trade and financial super-power, China is
a unique proof of transformation from a Third World country to major
economic, military and political power, while at the same time remaining
an underdeveloped country by several important per-capita parameters
and unequal quality of its development overall its territory. In spite of
this paradox, China achieved unprecedented rapid industrialisation,
urbanisation and economic and social transformation during 40 years of
realization of “reform and opening-up policy”9. It grasped the chances
of globalization and in spite of forceful engagement with the global market managed to perform sovereign political economy. During the
first decades of inclusive growth and development, it alleviated from
absolute poverty more than 260 million people and upgraded the quality
of life for another 800 million of its citizens. By doing this China
significantly contributed to lessening global poverty10. Together with
other members of the BRICS group, China has raised hopes, but also
potential for reforming the existing platforms or even building new
ones for cooperation, as productive alternatives to hegemonic ones
created by the North. China’s globally spread gigantic project the Belt
and Road Initiative, together with its ever-growing global financial and
trade impact, opened new corridors for trade, investment, traffic and
ICT infrastructure construction and people to people connectivity,
bypassing or passing over North11.
Neoliberal globalization led to massive inequality and worsening
of the situation of a sharp division between financial oligarchies and
working millions. The rise of Asia has also been the rise of Asian financial
oligarchy, not the rise of quality of living conditions of Asian people in
general. Economic growth and development did not mean a decline in
poverty for the majority of Asian and African societies, although in 2014
they achieved 47-time growth over that reached in 1970. Rising markets
and economies that proved to contribute significantly to global growth
and wealth in general, also showed that growth and development, that
marked the rise of emerging markets through intense urbanisation and
industrialisation, were not parallel processes with reduction of poverty
and inequality. Growth and development could even produce bigger
income disparity and new forms of poverty, such as urban poverty
and children’s poverty, and cause numerous social distortions affecting
traditions, family and local community bonds, causing environmental
damage, ageing of the population and other numerous and long-lasting
problems12. Policies and mechanisms to protect the most vulnerable
elements of society, as well as investment in education, social services,
and health systems, were crucial elements of becoming resilient toward
similar future challenges. The Asian economic crises proved also that
exposure to inevitable neo-liberal hits of global financial speculations
could severely damage their economic and social stability, as well as the
common preventative measures and policies that were needed. Once
again, networks for cooperation and solidarity were seen as needed and
missed tools for tackling similar problems.
While the world’s richest one per cent have more than twice as much wealth as 6.9 billion people, almost half of humanity is living on less than
US$ 5.50 a day, and approximately 735 million people are still living in
extreme poverty on less than US$1.9013. Global income inequality has
increased in nearly all world regions in recent decades with different
levels in different countries, even in those that share similar levels of
development. This put even more credence in the national policies and
institutions needed in addressing this issue and making joint efforts to
change the global system that creates such developments14. Despite
making up only 16 per cent of the global population, people in highincome nations have gotten 47 per cent of all vaccine doses. That is in
contrast to people in lower-income nations, who have gotten just 0.2
per cent of all vaccine doses, despite making up 9 per cent of the world’s
population15.
According to WorldVision.Org, 1.3 billion people that live in 107
developing countries and represent 22 per cent of the world’s population
live in multidimensional poverty. In 2018, four out of five people below
the international poverty line lived in rural areas16. About 84.3 per
cent of multidimensional poor live in the Global South, increasingly
concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa17 and South Asia. At the same time
about 70 per cent of the global poor older than fifteen years have no
schooling or only very basic education18.
Women and children represent a majority of the poor in most
regions. Half of the poor are children, and today 258 million children,
which means one out of every five children, will not be allowed to go to
school, the majority of which will be girls. At the same time, the unpaid
care work done by women is estimated at US$10.8 trillion a year—three
times the size of the tech industry19
The 2008 crisis was not resolved and has remained above us,
endangering stability and prosperity of common people worldwide and
especially in Third World countries. A decade-long global wave of debt,
riding on low-interest rates, was a common tool to face challenges of the
2008 global crisis but now represents an existing threat not only to the
Global South, but to the Global North and global economic system in
totality. Covid-19 created an environment to expand this trend in every
way, as disrupted global chains of production and trade cut the modest
growth and recovery, employment, and fuelled the rise of poverty.
Global South proved, as ever, the most vulnerable to the ongoing
crisis and the last to get vaccines while the most vulnerable parts of
the communities suffered the most: women, children, the elderly, and people in the countryside. The need for a fairer and more sustainable
global economic and political order is highly needed, demonstrating
that invigorated South-South cooperation, based on the Bandung spirit
of solidarity, is the right way to pursue it.
