Global South upholds peaceful coexistence instead of lecturing

MA XUEJING/CHINA DAILY The third plenum of the 20th Communist Party of China Central Committee, held from July 15 to 18, emphasized the CPC's commitment to pursuing an independent foreign policy of peace and devotion to fostering a global community with a shared future, advocating for a fair and structured multipolar world and a universally beneficial and inclusive economic globalization. However, I only became aware of the five principles during a junior high school civics class when I was about 15 years old, and what I remember is that I was quite astonished that three "Third World" countries — that's how the developing world was then pejoratively called, although even then it accounted for the majority of humanity — were able to develop such a globally important concept without any involvement of the West, which then dominated international relations. I regard China's three global initiatives as a direct follow-up to the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, for example, by promoting inclusiveness and mutual benefit, instead of zero-sum games, and respect for the diversity of civilizations, which includes respect for different value systems. All these aims are, within the ambit of the five principles, the Global South's response to some Western countries' attempt to impose their supposedly "universally valid" socio-political values on countries that have, for centuries or even millennia, developed their own value systems, which should always be interpreted in relation to their respective national, regional, social, cultural and religious context — for instance, the West's emphasis on individualism versus, generally speaking, the Global South's stress on the collective whole. The five principles "have no expiry date" — they are here to continue the ongoing development efforts by the Global South, home to about three-quarters of our battered planet's population.