
Eric Olander discusses the Global South's perspective on the Beijing summits and the implications for international relations.
Eric Olander on how the Global South is reading the Beijing summits This week I'm joined again by Eric Olander , founder of the China Global South Project, which runs the most indispensable English-language operation going for understanding China's engagement with Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. I came in with a plan: map, region by region, how the capitals of the Global South were reading the back-to-back Trump and Putin visits to Beijing — relief at a steadier U.S.-China modus vivendi, or foreboding at a G2 condominium squeezing shut their room to maneuver. Eric dismantled the premise within ten minutes. The honest answer, he warned me, is that most of the Global South simply isn't watching the way we are — and the disappointment turned out to be the most interesting thing in the room. What looked like the absence of a story was the story. I'd built my questions around one assumption about what mattered; Eric had built his answers around another, and I cop to being schooled. Once you set the summit framing aside, what Eric's contributors are actually seeing comes into focus: Japan racing to recenter an Asia-Pacific security architecture, a region…
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