G20 South Africa: The Global South's response to a shifting world

Editor's note: Ge Lin is a CGTN economic commentator. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

As the global economic landscape undergoes profound reconfiguration, the 2025 G20 Summit in South Africa marks a moment of transformation. On one side, the foundational assumption of international economics – that factors of production move freely across borders – faces its most serious challenge in decades, especially with the United States' absence from the summit. On the other, the Global South, once marginalized in global decision-making, is now taking a more central role in shaping the future of global governance.

In the past, international economics was built on a fundamental assumption: mobility. The movement of capital, technology, and labor across borders has driven growth and created opportunities for convergence. From the 1990s until recent years, the rapid expansion of globalization confirmed this logic empirically. China's development experience – where openness to global markets enabled industrial upgrading – stood as one of the clearest demonstrations of how mobility could narrow development gaps.

Today, however, that premise is under pressure. International economics lacks the theoretical and empirical preparation for a world in which major powers, particularly Western economies, have halted their commitment to openness. Economists have never confronted a full-scale reversal of globalization, and therefore are without the historical data, frameworks, and even conceptual tools to anticipate the systemic consequences.

While China and many emerging economies continue to promote openness, the growing divergence among the world's leading economies means that the principle of free movement of economic factors is no longer universally accepted. If this trend intensifies, a critical question arises: can countries that have yet to industrialize still follow the same paths to growth that earlier industrializers once relied upon?

Against this backdrop, the United States' resistance to the summit – culminating in its decision not to attend, followed by discussions of sending a lower-level delegation – highlights a broader misalignment between Western political dynamics and the emerging demands of global governance. Whether Washington participates symbolically or completely abstain is less important than the larger point: global governance is evolving without Western leadership, and the Global South must take its place on the center stage.

At this year's G20 Summit, the rise of the Global South has manifested in a more tangible and pragmatic manner. The summit's agenda reflects this shift, with priorities centered on practical issues that address the daily economic and governance challenges faced by less-developed countries.

One prominent issue is how resource-rich developing countries can better manage their mineral wealth to support inclusive and sustainable development. For decades, many of these nations have found themselves trapped in a cycle where they are primarily suppliers of raw materials within global supply chains dominated by Western powers. While this position provides some economic benefits, those benefits have often been narrowly distributed, with limited spillover effects that could contribute to broad-based national development.

Rather than pursuing unrealistic leaps into high-tech manufacturing or other advanced sectors, the G20 agenda focuses on gradual, institutional reforms that prioritize the sustainable use of existing resources. Key to this approach is maximizing the developmental potential of their resource endowments, ensuring that the revenues are more equitably distributed. This includes addressing the "resource curse," a phenomenon where countries rich in natural resources struggle with economic diversification, leaving them vulnerable to underdevelopment in other sectors.

Another core issue is the pursuit of a just energy transition. Developing countries remind the world that the historical responsibilities of industrialized nations cannot be overlooked. Advanced economies built their prosperity on decades of carbon-intensive growth; to now impose a collective transition plan on countries that never underwent heavy industrialization is neither realistic nor fair. A fair transition recognizes differentiated responsibilities: developed countries must lead in technology, financing, and pace, while developing economies must be given the developmental space to avoid choosing between growth and sustainability.

Debt sustainability poses an even more complicated challenge. Many developing economies have adopted modern fiscal and monetary frameworks, yet they remain vulnerable to external shocks and interest rate cycles determined largely by the US. Western commercial creditors and financial institutions, as the largest creditors of African countries, have exacerbated the debt burden on these nations through high interest rates.

Over the years, China has played a leading role in promoting and implementing the G20 Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI), becoming the largest contributor to the initiative within the G20. Moreover, China has alleviated debt pressures on African countries through measures such as signing debt relief agreements and driving infrastructure development across the continent.

At the same time, the need for fiscal and monetary self-discipline remains a significant issue. While most developing economies have embraced more sophisticated financial systems, maintaining fiscal and monetary discipline is often a struggle. For them, the debt debate is not just about addressing the actions of creditors but about establishing frameworks that promote discipline, and foster long-term, self-sustaining growth.

These priorities together make the 2025 G20 not just another summit, but a departure from the old grammar of global governance. In earlier waves of globalization, the Global South was a peripheral participant – neither agenda-setter nor system designer. But today, the issues being deliberated at the Summit are precisely those that determine whether developing countries can maintain their developmental momentum amid global uncertainty.

What emerges from Johannesburg, therefore, is a dual picture. On one track, international economics faces the need to rethink models built on an assumption of unimpeded mobility, as Western economies, especially the US, increasingly retreat into protectionism. On another track, the Global South advances developmental agendas that reflect structural realities. These two tracks intersect but do not collapse into each other.

The rise of the Global South is ultimately a call to preserve the conditions under which catch-up development remains possible. A world where mobility diminishes selectively – open for some, closed for others – risks hardening structural inequality. Johannesburg does not settle this tension, but it signals that the Global South is no longer merely participating in global governance, but shaping its terms with grounded logic.