Global North and South — and China's inevitability

The Bay of Bengal Conversations 2025 resonated with the compulsions of smaller nations and the opportunities that the unraveling of the western model offers. The theme — Rivals, Ruptures, Realignments — brought out some unusual critique of the global North, something that was unthinkable until a couple of years ago. Issues like frustration with the status quo; helplessness vis a vis big power agendas; small powers' dilemmas such as who to side with; back-paddling of democracy, often condoned by the big powers if democratic regression is aligned with their interests; demise of the rules-based order (the way the West peddled it as an abiding principle for all); and the inevitability of China as a bridge between the North and South dominated the charged discourse for three days.

The forum, organised by the Center for Governance Studies at Dhaka, drew nearly 200 foreign and local delegates and took place to the context of unease and anxiety within Bangladesh ahead of general elections in February next year.

Professor Julia Ronkifard, from University of Nottingham's Malaysia campus, used the phrase "geopolitically motivated new disorder" with the rule of law crumbling.

In this volatile global scenario China stands out as the most important trading and political partner — no matter what others say, or how long the EU leaders continue to dance along Donald Trump, believes Ms Ronkifard. China offers value-free cooperation without interference in domestic affairs of smaller countries and hence more and more countries are embracing it, she insists.

One of the sessions — The Politics of Money: Sanctions, Sovereignty, and the New Economic Iron Curtain — generated quite a heated debate as to how people at large only speak about economic and political sanctions only on nations such as Iran, Russia and China.

Strange that nobody called for sanctions against the US, the UK and Germany for causing deaths and destruction in Afghanistan and Iraq without the UN authority. The US deployed even the mother of all bombs (MOBS), cluster bombs and Daisy Cutters in these wars, but hardly did any one talk about possible sanctions on the US-led West for inflicting wars — a charge that invited punitive measures against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.

Interestingly, the Israeli aggression against Palestinians since October 2023, and the nearly unqualified complicity of leading Western nations — including the US, the UK, Germany and France — emerged as an inescapable subject during most sessions.

For decades, the Global South has quietly carried the burden of a world order shaped by Western political, economic and security preferences. That burden now appears unsustainable with the eroding moral and strategic authority of the West and being openly questioned not only across Asia, Africa and Latin America but also within Europe and the US itself.

The Bay of Bengal Conversations in Dhaka captured this shift with clarity: middle and smaller states feel compelled to reassess their futures, their alignments and, perhaps most importantly, their options. With China, Southeast Asia and parts of South Asia now powering global growth, the Western model — built on financial dominance, unilateral sanctions, costly military interventions and moral selectivity — appears less relevant to emerging economies.

At the heart of this reassessment lies a factor that has become unavoidable — China's structural inevitability in 21st-century geopolitics. The global centre of gravity has moved decisively toward Asia. The Gaza war intensified this feeling. Speaker after speaker referred to the political hypocrisy of Western capitals: preaching human rights to the Global South while shielding Israeli conduct from scrutiny. For many delegates, this confirmed that the normative authority of the West has eroded beyond repair. As that authority weakens, alternatives become both visible and viable — and China is inevitably at the centre of these alternatives.

Talking about the West's China-containment policy, most speakers concurred China is too large an economy, too central to supply chains, and too deeply integrated into Asian infrastructure and trade networks to be contained, ignored, confined or bypassed.

Economist Rehman Sobhan's intervention at the gathering captured this shift succinctly: Bangladesh — and by extension many other countries — must take advantage of an "Asian-led economic order" or risk falling behind. This idea reflects a reality that smaller states have already internalised: future prosperity depends on leveraging Asian markets, capital and connectivity, not on nostalgia for West-dominated frameworks that no longer deliver.

Bangladesh's Foreign Affairs Adviser Touhid Hossain emphasised the need for sovereign agency, calling for active engagement with "major and middle powers alike". Many participants echoed this approach: neither alignment with China nor alignment with a declining West could guarantee stability. Instead, strategic autonomy — hedging, balancing, diversifying — was seen as the rational pathway for small states.

A recurrent theme at the event was the risks that great-power rivalry generates for small nations.

Speakers repeatedly stressed that the Global South must learn to convert structural shifts into strategic space — not get trapped in them as the West no longer offers the reference point for political virtue, economic modelling or strategic certainty. The legitimacy crisis triggered by the Gaza conflict accelerated what was already under way — the Global South's search for alternatives.

For the Global South, this moment presents an opportunity to move from the margins to the centre — but only if it acts with clarity, confidence and strategic autonomy.