By Herman Tiu Laurel

 

The world has enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed.

– Mahatma Gandhi

In 2024 the number of people living on less than $6.85 a day in the entire world is estimated at 3.5 billion, unchanged due to population growth from the year 1990 according to a report of the World Bank Group.

Modern agricultural and industrial technology allows Mankind to produce all the food, energy and basic necessities for the entire 8.2 billion population of Earth today, but in most places in the Global South these capacities have not been attained.

The reason all the progress of Mankind has not reached close to half of the world’s population today is the bottleneck in global governance, constricted by the politics of greed and residual impact of the age of greed and imperialism, colonialism and neo-colonialism.

Global governance today represented by the United Nations centering on the Security Council is locked in the constant obstructionism from political dispensations of the Global North seeking to maintain hegemony, while the Global South seeks emancipation of all nations.

It is for this reason that today the Global South must make its determined effort to reform global governance in and around the United Nations system reinforced by alternative governance mechanism that will ensure multipolar participation and initiatives’ efficacy.

The 21^st century has seen the emergence of a strong Global South led by the largest developing economy China as the engine of global economic sustainability contributing 30% to global GDP, with dynamic initiatives towards supplementary global governance mechanisms.

Successfully building up its national economy China introduced its economic headship in 2008 to aid in the West’s Financial Crash by pump priming the world economy, and in 2012 launching the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) jump starting economic upliftment of the Global South.

The economic empowerment of China led to initiatives to shepherd the Global South partnerships such as the BRICS and its supporting institutions such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and New Development Bank (NDB) to support the BRI and BRICS initiatives.

Through the decade-and-a-half of their evolution the BRI and BRICS have become rising alternative global economic and development management systems giving avenues for the Global South voices to be heard, assert and take dynamic cooperative action to realize common dreams.

BRICS taking off.

            The Brazil, Russia, India, China and, later, South Africa partnership has a long history from its initial ideation to its first meetings in 2006, then 2009 and when South Africa joined in 2011, and finally congealed in the 2017 and 2022 summits in China and in Kazan, Russia in 2024 growing to dozens more countries counting 31% of world GDP and 42% of world population.

            The BRICS rocket booster fired in 2024 setting the course for new global governance in its Kazan Declaration to include:

1. A call for a multipolar world order;
2. Support for United Nations’ reforms to increase its democracy, representation in the Security Council and overall effectiveness;
3. Agreed to creation of a new investment platform using the New Development Bank;
4. Study creation of new, independent cross-border settlement system;
5. Support for alternative currencies in the union’s currency reserve pool’
6. Reform of the Bretton Woods institution increasing contribution of developing economies;
7. Called on developed countries to fulfil obligations to help needy countries;
8. Called for prevention of arms race in space, along with dozens more goals.

            While some Western countries continue to cast negative aspersions on BRICS and its development, the Global South is investing wholeheartedly it attention and efforts to pursue the global reforms, generation of its cooperative power, as it ramps up its impact on global governance in the immediate and long term.

            BRICS is on the road to opening up to world to the new horizon of global freedom from the past era of Western controlled world to an age of Forever Peace and Prosperity, with its growing intra-BRICS trade among the major countries of the major regions of the world, the growing trade in local currencies and opening of new significant trade routes thanks to the BRI.

The Belt and Road Initiative grows.

            The recent opening in November of 2024 of the $ 3.6-billion China funded Chancay Port in Peru is one of the latest significant Belt and Road Initiative projects that has networked the rest of the globe, from Southeast Asia to South Asia, to West Asia and Europe, to one of its earliest beneficiaries Africa, Oceania and now Latin America.

            The Belt and Road Initiative has been breathtaking into foresight and vision, and in it courageous confidence to overcome the expected challenges posed by heretofore extremely conflict-stricken and unstable parts of the world in the path of the global network of railway. ports, water and power, technology and telecommunications infrastructures.

            The obstacles appeared daunting but through transcendent optimism of China’s ideological leadership aspiring to create a better world not only for itself but for the world, advocating the “Community of Shared Future for Mankind” and now enabling and mobilizing the Global Majority of the Global South, that shared future is now a reality.

             The Belt and Road Initiative has made many of humanity’s dream of peace and prosperity for all a reality which, in the meantime, is expanding as the participating countries receive the benefits of modernization and innovative technologies arising from China’s own heightened technological developments and economic stability and growing market.

President Xi’s Three Global Initiatives.

            With the BRICS Plus growing to cover the majority of the world’s population and GDP the firm principles to focus upon and guide it through the turbulence of the geopolitical hotspot crises dotting Europe, West Asia and unease in the South China Sea stirred up by powers of the West reluctant to yield to the shared future of global democracy and shared prosperity.

            To serve as guidance to the global community and majority in the pursuit of the “Community of Shard Future for Mankind” and the assertion of the Global South’s engagement in global governance, President Xi Jinping of China has set forth in the course of the past five years three global initiatives to provide the ground for the grand common effort.

            The Global Development Initiative was introduced by President Xi at the 76^th Session of the UN General Assembly in 2021, advising the world to engage all nations in the process of improving economic and social well-being of peoples around the globe, uplift nations through wealth creation through infrastructure and trade linkages.

            The Global Security Initiative was put forth by President Xi at the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference in 2022, upholding a vision of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security, respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries and adhering to non-interference in internal affairs, summed up in indivisible security for all.

            Finally, the Global Civilization Initiative to end the wrong notion of “clash of civilizations” harbored by some Western cultures hiding racist undercurrents leading to “forever wars,” and instead espousing a clear vision of the millennial human history and its variety of civilizations and the respective contributions of each contributing and promoting continuous and ever heightening development of Human Civilization.

The Future built on Sharing.

            For this 2024 year-ender we started by recalling the global inspirational Hindu historical figure Mahatma Gandhi reminding all generations of humanity that “The world has enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed.” We also would like to add the Christian Christmas carol call, “Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men.”

            It has taken one of the oldest living civilizations of Mankind and the modern ideologies of the West in the form of scientific socialism with Chinese characteristics, to formulate the analytical and ideological basis for constructing the theory and practice of 21^st Century global governance principles, structures and institution to propose a program of action to change Human history for the better with an action plan for “forever peace and prosperity.”

            It is to the vital interest of the Global South, the Global Majority, to join in and put its growing might behind the great project of building that “Community of Shared Future for Mankind,” fight for it with all its combined might, and ensure the continuing development, security and stability, and civilizational harmony for all time. ###

   

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