Hui Fan
The collective rise of the Global South is the hallmark of a world in profound transformation. In 2025, UNESCO had its first Arab Director General, and Latin America is leading the race for the next U.N. Secretary General. Organizations such as BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) now represent a growing share of global GDP and population.
Yet, the world’s governance architecture grows increasingly out of step with today’s reality. The voice of the Global South remains subdued in institutions shaped by the post-war West. Reform is no longer optional; it is essential.
An Outdated System
At the World Bank, developing countries hold 47% of its voting rights, despite accounting for approximately 60% of global GDP in PPP terms and 80% of world economic growth. At the IMF, the U.S. retains a 16.49% voting share, enough to veto any major decision, while the more than 40 sub-Saharan African countries combined hold less than 5% of the voting share.
This disparity is not only statistical. Global attention and funding are channeled to major-power geopolitical competition, while long-term, existential challenges such as climate change, poverty, and public health are marginalized. Development financing is diverted to security agendas, sidelining the South’s urgent needs for industrialization, infrastructure, and job creation.
Rules are written in the North, but the costs are borne disproportionately by the South. The unilateral Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), for instance, forces developing nations to comply with a complex carbon pricing system, unfairly penalizing their exports and development needs. Another example is the global minimum corporate tax. It undermines the fiscal sovereignty of Global South countries by stripping them of legitimate tools like tax incentives once used by rich nations themselves.
Hand the Microphone to the 80% of Global Growth
How to foster greater balance and equity in the world? Well, it starts with giving all nations a fair say. All sovereign countries, regardless of size or wealth, are equal members of the international community and are entitled to have a say in decisions that affect everyone. The answer is all too clear: making sure developing countries have a place at the table.
It means firmly rejecting double standards, cherry-picking, unilateralism and exclusive clubs. It means upholding the international rule of law and the purposes and principles of the U.N. Charter. And it means empowering the U.N. to tackle the world’s most pressing challenges in development, security and trust.
What we need is a system that works for everyone, one that bridges the North-South gap and spreads the benefits of global cooperation to all. And there must be action-oriented and results-driven solutions to deliver this vision.
China’s Playbook
These are the very principles that underpin China’s Global Governance Initiative (GGI)—a proposal to make global institutions more inclusive, rules-based, and results-oriented.
Unlike the gated clubs some powers keep expanding, the GGI unlocks doors through SCO+ and other platforms initiated and led by emerging markets, offering the Global South a real alternative and opportunities to foster open, pragmatic partnerships focused on shared development.
Unlike the protectionist power that slaps tariffs on the vulnerable, the GGI aims to erase them. China’s Belt and Road Initiative is broadening participation in global trade through reduced trade costs and cross-border digital currency payments. And China’s zero-tariff treatment for 100 percent tariff lines to all least developed countries and African countries having diplomatic relations with China helps turn China’s big market into a big opportunity for the South.
Unlike the “my-country-first” chorus that keeps sidelining U.N. resolutions, the GGI envisions a more balanced, multipolar system of global governance. China calls for U.N. reform geared toward strategic planning, practical results, and greater representation for developing countries, and is convinced that multilateralism delivers when it represents the many, not the few.
The Four Initiatives
The GGI is not a standalone proposal. Rather, it is part of a set of proposals China put forward to address global challenges: the Global Development Initiative (GDI), the Global Security Initiative (GSI), and the Global Civilization Initiative (GCI).
The GDI serves as a master key designed to crack development bottlenecks. The GSI acts as a firewall that aims to bring about common, comprehensive, cooperative, and sustainable security. The GCI functions as a bridge that brings different cultures closer together. The GGI operates as a calibrator—the institutional and normative framework that ties the other three together.
Eighty years ago, the U.N. was founded to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” Today, that mission endures but needs renewal. Reforming global governance is to update the U.N. and the broader multilateral institutions to reflect the world as it is, not as it was.
Proposals like the GGI point toward that recalibration—one where rules are shared, representation is fair, and cooperation is built on equality. And these truly represent the common aspiration of humanity, a deep understanding of historical imperatives, and a warm embrace of our era’s responsibilities.
The author is a Beijing-based observer of international affairs.