There is no single path to modernization, and human development will continue. These are some of the ideas proposed by the first Global South Media and Think Tanks Forum, held this week in the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo, under the motto “Development and revitalization: a new journey for the Global South.” term chosen by Financial Times as the most important of 2023.
The summit began with the reading of letters from Chinese President Xi Jinping and Brazilian President Lula da Silva, who commented that the countries of the so-called third world and developing countries are gaining momentum and becoming a new pole for the global economy.
“China is willing to work together with countries in the Global South to practice true multilateralism, advocate for an equitable and orderly multipolar world, as well as beneficial and inclusive economic globalization for all, with the aim of building a community of shared future. for humanity,” said the Chinese president through a letter.
“The Global South is a concept that reflects the importance of developing countries,” Lula said in a letter. “We are central actors in the new global geopolitics and we are willing to play a role in line with our political, economic and demographic weight.”
Congratulatory message from Chinese President Xi Jinping, being read at the opening of the Global South Media and Think Tanks Forum, in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Photo: Xinhua/Huang Jingwen
The forum took place in the context of the upcoming XIX G20 Summit, which will be held this November with Brazil in the presidency. Along these lines, one of the discussions that attracted attention was the de-dollarization of international trade in favor of local currencies.
“The meeting in Brazil is a kind of beginning for an issue that in one way or another has been on the world financial stage since the 21st century arrived,” he tells The Third the former Chilean ambassador to China, Fernando Reyes Matta. “Naturally, currently, in world trade, 83.2% is made in transactions through the dollar. But then you have to look at what happens with the other two currencies that follow. Much lower, yes, but the 5.7% in euro and the third currency, 5.6% in renminbi, the Chinese yuan, are important.”
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“This is just beginning, but nevertheless there are some signs to consider,” explains the also director of the Center for Latin American Studies on China of the UAB. “For example, the digital payment system with connectivity that ASEAN countries (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) have with their own currencies. And the same in oil transactions between the largest consuming countries: China, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, where the size of world oil trade exchanges in 2023 shows that a fifth of total transactions are “He made with currencies that were not the dollar.”
Modernization does not equal Westernization, was another of the topics of the forum, which showed the failure of some developing countries that have tried to follow Western models: Kenya, Egypt, Iraq and Honduras.
“What China is telling us when it uses the word modernization is that it cannot be measured by how capital increases, or the wealth derived from the productive dimensions that are generated. Something that marked, say the Chinese, especially the entire evolution of the industrial revolution for around 250 years,” warns Reyes Matta.
“What China proposes is that we have to move towards modernization where the specific measurement of whether this is valid or not depends on how the information about the increase in the quality of life of the people of the country they are living in is realized.” modernization. In other words, how advanced comprehensive social development is generated,” he adds.
Among the guests at the forum were Dima Al-Khatib, director of the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation, Yeidckol Polevnsky Gurwitz, president of the Asia-Pacific Foreign Relations Committee of the Mexican Senate, and representatives of Chinese banking, universities, think tanks and technology companies such as the Kwai social network.
