Is the Global South a reality or a fallacy?

The Global South is a pervasive concept that has gained traction as of late. But how much substance is there?

An essay published in the influential Foreign Affairs magazine claims that The Global South is back. But what is exactly the Global South? A reminiscence of the Non-Aligned Movement of the 1950-1970s?

For most analysts, the Global South includes large emerging countries like Brazil, India, and Indonesia, and a multitude of smaller middle or low-income countries. Some analysts like the author of the aforementioned essay in Foreign Affairs also put the rich GCC oil-producing nations like Saudi Arabia and UAE in this Global South overarching idea, which might not be relevant. These oil producers that went from rags to riches in two or three generations have a different challenge: how to increase labor productivity and diversify away from their dependence on hydrocarbons.

Finally, there are some analysts who think two Great Powers like China and Russia - and the latter’s Eurasian neighbors, the former Soviet Union so to say - should be included in the Global South. This is inconsistent. Russia belongs to the northern industrialized countries, even though it followed a different ideological path since the beginning of the 20th century. (German historians have a word for that: Zonderweg).

As for China, it is in a league of its own due to the sheer size of its economy and its peculiar trajectory. The Chinese development model could be analyzed as a sequence of different phases. From 1949 to 1978, it followed a Soviet-style planning and resource mobilization scheme until the country achieved a certain stage of modernization and industrialization. It then switched to the Asian development model followed beforehand by Japan, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan. A mixture of state capitalism and the private sector. Deng Xiaoping put it very clearly in 1978 that China's overarching goal should be to achieve technological catch-up with the Soviet Union and the United States.

There are some common challenges facing developing nations, and there might be some advantages in backwardation, as returns to physical capital are higher in capital-scarce countries. But once an economy reaches a threshold - somewhere in the USD 5000-15000 GDP per capita bracket - then it has no other choice than investing in technology if it wants to escape the so-called "Middle Income Trap".

Take for example India and Brazil. Both countries have implemented policies to bridge the technological gap - especially in IT services and Space technologies in the case of India - but these efforts still stand behind what China managed to achieve. Brazil's efforts are mostly visible in the Aeronautical sector with Embraer Jets. The advances achieved by these two emerging economies remain limited as opposed to the holistic and broad-based technological advances achieved by China.

Overall, there are ultimately only two types of nations: technologically advanced nations and technological laggards. The goal of every middle power and developing nation that is still well behind the technological frontier should not be to contemplate its position within some idealized Global South, but to catch up as fast as possible with the more advanced nations - be they in the South, East, or West.

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