China will be unsuccessful in filling a vacuum within developing economies---mindset, attitude, and U.S. influence Schuman 23 – nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in foreign policy. Why China won’t win the Global South. Atlantic Council. https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/report/why-china-wont-win-the-global-south//HarrisC

In this highly complex Global South, Xi’s attitude toward the West may be problematic for, and possibly even damaging to, his quest for leadership of the developing world. Xi sees the future global order as a struggle between the West and the rest, a struggle he wants to lead and control. But even though many leaders in the Global South are frustrated with Washington, its policies, and its attitude, they won’t see it in their interests to choose sides in the competition between the United States and China and burn their bridges to the West. The advanced democracies simply remain too important to many members of the Global South for them to take an oppositional stance. That reality may increase the appeal of other, less confrontational, approaches to global governance reform than what Xi is proposing. For instance, Modi, through his approach at the recent G20 summit, is offering a more inclusive vision, in which the voice of the Global South is heard and enhanced within the context of cooperation with the West and its institutions. That could well be a more appealing, and more pragmatic, strategy for other leaders in the developing world.

China’s political elite seem to recognize the vulnerability of their position in the Global South. Shortly after the G20 in September 2023, the state-run China Daily insisted that Washington’s efforts to marginalize China “will hardly pull the wool over the eyes of most developing countries about the irreplaceable role China has been playing in defending the interests and rights of developing countries.”57 A Day earlier, the Global Times, run by the Chinese Communist Party, called the notion of a Global South without China a “pseudo-proposition.” It went on to argue that “some people in the West attempt to exclude China from the ‘Global South,’ but they cannot deny our close ties and cooperation with developing countries, nor can they deny the contributions China has made to the development of ‘the South’ countries and South-South cooperation.”58 Such editorials offer a window into the discomfort some within the Chinese government feel about China’s position in the developing world.

China will without doubt be a major political and economic force in the Global South. But its dominance is far from inevitable or assured. What is more certain is that the Global South will be one of the great battlefields of the growing US-China competition, much the same as the “Third World” had been during the Cold War with the Soviet Union. In a sense, this is potentially one way in which superpower competition is not entirely negative for the world. Many countries in the Global South are likely to play one camp off the other, in the process attempting to win for themselves greater attention, influence, financing, and economic opportunities. Regions that languished in a unipolar world, deprived of leverage, can now have their voices heard and respected. The contest also can offer fresh possibilities for the United States and its partners as well: to reengage with regions, countries, and peoples who have been marginalized in the post-Soviet era. Despite prevailing perceptions—or misperceptions—the Global South remains a fertile ground for advancing US ideals, influence, and business in a way that offers the promise of mutual benefit for many developing nations. Beijing has, with its usual lack of foreign policy finesse, fostered dissension and controversies in its relations with the Global South that Washington can exploit to reassert US influence within the developing world. Achieving that goal, however, will require some new thinking in US foreign policy circles and Washington’s approach to the developing world.