The emerging countries of the global south admire the values of the West. Its citizens would prefer to live in the United States or a country in the European Union rather than anywhere else in the world. However, they prefer to do business with China, which they continue to consider as the great global factory and the best lender.
Regarding this world that is moving away from bipolarity and seeking pragmatism, Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping, leaders of the two most important economies, will meet today in San Francisco. They haven't held hands for a year, a year of complex relationships in a more fragmented and less secure world.
The latest survey by the European Council on Foreign Relations (CERE), a think tank based in Brussels, which La Vanguardia publishes exclusively, shows that the United States continues to be the preferred ally of emerging countries when they fear for their security, but are committed to China when they seek greater and faster economic growth. They not only want a greater trade relationship, but also greater Chinese investments.
No other country can produce as many things and at such a good price as China. Its workers are paid little and unions are prohibited. Europe and the United States have benefited for decades from a trade relationship that emphasized production and cost reduction. Now that they are losing trust in their old partner and looking for ways to reduce economic dependence, supply chains adapt, but so do prices. There are new partners that do not have the strategic rivalries of China, but Western factories that set up shop in Latin America or Southeast Asia cannot compete with Chinese ones.
A study by Havard and Dartmouth universities indicates that imports from Vietnam are 10% more expensive than those from China and 3% more than those from Mexico.
Emerging countries do not see China as a strategic rival and want to benefit from its more competitive products. Consumer goods made in China have increased consumption and reduced inflation in Europe and the United States for forty years and now they are seeking the same effect.
It seems logical that, due to the fight with the West, 74% of Russians want a greater presence of China in their economy, but it is not so logical that 60% of the Saudis, 53% of the Indonesians or the 50% of Turks.
The survey, which CERE has carried out with the Europe in a Changing World project, from the University of Oxford, in eleven European countries as well as the United States, China, India, Russia, Brazil, Indonesia, Turkey, South Africa, Saudi Arabia and Korea of the South, draws a world “à la carte”, where relationships are very fluid and no one marries anyone. The same countries that think that the United States and Europe are a model of values and rights also consider that they are the main culprits for the lack of peace in Ukraine.
When Europe and the US affirm that the war will not end until Ukraine has recovered all the territories that Russia has occupied by force, even if this means much more time and many more deaths, the emerging countries believe that there is nothing more urgent that a ceasefire and that if the price of peace is a depleted Ukraine, it is worth paying because, in his opinion, Russia will win the war in five years anyway.
The majority also thinks that the main obstacle to peace is not Russia, but the United States and the European Union. 82% of Chinese hold this opinion. The war may be existential for Russia and the West, but it certainly is not for the rest of the world.
Without this vital involvement, emerging economies view the conflict with more distance and pragmatism, and consider it a problem that Europeans do not view it with the same coldness. Four in ten surveyed in these countries maintain that the European Union will be blown up in the next two decades due to the internal divisions that the war is already causing. This is the opinion, for example, of 67% of the Chinese and 62% of the Saudis.
Very significant is the thermometer of optimism. It marks very high levels in India (86%) and other emerging countries and very low in Europe and the United States, where almost half of the population views the future with pessimism.
This self-critical vision contrasts with the attraction that the US and EU countries provoke among citizens of the global south. When choosing a country to live, only 5% choose China, while 56% would prefer to settle in Europe or the United States.
The old belief that trade relations would strengthen democracy and international stability is today greatly devalued. China has shown that it is possible to grow from authoritarianism and nationalism.
Europe, however, remains anchored in increasingly minority principles. 63% of Europeans, for example, are against nuclear weapons, but 86% of Chinese believe that there is no better defense.
The bipolar world that, on the one hand, held on in Washington and Brussels and, on the other, in Moscow and Beijing, is faltering. India, Brazil, Turkey, Indonesia and the rest of the emerging economies will soon overthrow it.
Timothy Garton-Ash, Ivan Krastev and Mark Leonard, authors of the survey, consider that if Europe is to survive in this new “a la carte” world, it must abandon “the ierenic past”, that is, the belief that a more peaceful is possible. They believe that it should invest more in its own defense and at the same time, adopt “strategic interdependence”, that is, the ability to close very flexible agreements with very diverse partners and for very specific interests. In short, they prescribe more hard power and less soft power.
