The Sovereign South and the Gravitational Rise of Multipolarity

The Global South is no longer seeking to integrate into the Western “rules-based order”; it is shaping its own model of a sovereign multipolar world, in which China stands not as a hegemon but as a pillar of a new geopolitical gravity.

Phil ButlerPhil Butler

The 21st century will not be remembered for the fall of empires but for the quiet reclamation of sovereignty by the Global South. While Western elites debate the “rules-based order” as if it were eternal law, a new world is being built—not in Geneva or Washington, but in Brasília, Pretoria, Beijing, Tehran, and Jakarta. This world does not reject multilateralism; it rejects monopoly over its meaning.

China is at the center of this transformation—not as a challenger seeking to replace the West, but as a gravitational node enabling others to escape the orbit of conditional development, financial coercion, and moral paternalism. The Global Development Initiative (GDI), Global Security Initiative (GSI), Global Civilization Initiative (GCI), and the newly launched Global Governance Initiative (GGI) are prime examples of China’s unique stance. Beijing offers a non-negotiable framework made up of sovereign equality, non-interference, and civilizational pluralism. These are not slogans; they are the bedrock of a post-hegemonic order.

The Global South is not choosing China over the West. It is choosing itself—its right to define development, security, and modernity on its own terms

At the 2025 G20 summit in Johannesburg—the first ever held on African soil — the United States boycotted and dismissed South Africa’s priorities on trade, climate, and equity as incompatible with its own. Yet from that absence, a new alignment emerged. Leaders from Brazil, India, China, Turkey, and the African Union reaffirmed a shared truth: the Global South is no longer a periphery—it is a pole. As South African President Cyril Ramaphosa declared, the summit responded to “calls around the world” for progress on the true imperatives of our time—imperatives long ignored by a unipolar consensus that equated “universal values” with Western preferences.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney called it a “rupture,” not a transition. He was right. The liberal order is not evolving; it is fragmenting under the weight of its own contradictions—endless wars, unilateral sanctions, and the weaponization of finance. Meanwhile, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, now home to 46% of the world’s population, operates on a starkly different logic: no ideological alignment is required, only adherence to the UN Charter’s core principles—sovereignty, territorial integrity, and non-interference. This minimal framework is, in fact, maximal: it allows communist Vietnam, Islamic Brunei, democratic Indonesia, and revolutionary Iran to cooperate on trade, infrastructure, and security—precisely because they are not forced to conform.

China understands that in a multipolar world, influence is not seized—it is earned through indispensability. The Belt and Road Initiative does not demand regime change. Instead, the developers lay railways, new power grids, and connect ports. When Argentina’s ideologically anti-communist President Javier Milei took office, he discovered something his rhetoric had obscured: “Relations with China are excellent… They don’t ask for anything in return. All they ask is that I don’t disturb them.” Geopolitical gravity overrides ideology—not through force, but through complementarity.

This is the genius of China’s approach: it does not seek disciples, but partners in coexistence. It rejects the logic of the Monroe Doctrine’s exclusive spheres. Chinese strategic thinkers warn about carving the world into blocs. The idea of this betrays Deng Xiaoping’s 1974 vow that if China ever “turned into a superpower that played the tyrant,” the world should “overthrow it.” Beijing recognizes that its moral authority in the Global South depends on offering an alternative to, rather than a replica of, great-power domination.

BRICS+—now expanded to include Iran, Ethiopia, Egypt, and the UAE—embodies this vision. It is not an anti-West alliance but a pro-sovereignty coalition. Its members trade in local currencies, build alternative payment systems, and share satellite data—all to reduce dependency on institutions where voting power reflects 20th-century power, not 21st-century reality.

The West mistakes this for disloyalty. It is, in fact, maturity. The Global South is not choosing China over the West. It is choosing itself—its right to define development, security, and modernity on its own terms.

French President Emmanuel Macron recently warned the G20 may be “coming to the end of a cycle.” He is half right. The cycle of Western custodianship is ending. But multilateralism is not dying—it is decolonizing.

The future belongs to the doers, not those who preach about change. China is not the new hegemon. It is the gravitational center of a world finally remembering its own mass.

And the South? It is no longer rising. It has arrived.

Phil Butler is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, and an author of the recent bestseller “Putin’s Praetorians” and other book