As the North-South model wanes
China's South-South cooperation on poverty reduction injects strong impetus into global governance
The pace of global poverty reduction is falling far short of expectations. According to United Nations estimates, the global rate of extreme poverty will remain as high as 10 percent in 2026. By 2030, regions with a high concentration of Global South countries, such as those in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, will be unable to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goal of eradicating absolute poverty on schedule.
As the global development landscape undergoes profound evolution, the North-South cooperation model, which once played a central role in global poverty governance, is steadily waning. According to OECD data, with traditional donor countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom cutting aid budgets drastically, total official development assistance in 2025 plummeted by 23.1 percent compared to 2024, falling back to its 2015 level in absolute terms. This will further worsen conditions for impoverished populations across the Global South.
Against this backdrop, China's own record stands out. Since the launch of reform and opening-up in 1978, China has lifted 800 million rural residents out of extreme poverty, accounting for more than 70 percent of global poverty reduction over the same period. In particular, China met the poverty reduction target of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development 10 years ahead of schedule. While eradicating extreme poverty domestically, China has also actively participated in global poverty reduction governance through diversified South-South cooperation and has developed its own distinctive Chinese experience.
On the conceptual level, China has developed a distinctive body of development theory grounded in its own experience of poverty reduction. Its main features include a people-centered approach and measures tailored to local conditions, while emphasizing effective governance, social equity and inclusive growth. This experience, distinct from the Western liberal paradigm, has shown the Global South that there is more than one path to modernization, and latecomer countries are capable of charting their own successful development paths. This has instilled confidence in Global South countries' poverty-reduction efforts. China's South-South cooperation on poverty reduction upholds the principles of extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits, fully respects the autonomy and agency of partner countries, and helps China's development and poverty reduction experience take root more readily across the Global South.
On the practical level, China has drawn on several major global initiatives — the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative, the Global Civilization Initiative and the Global Governance Initiative, as well as the Belt and Road Initiative — while deepening cooperation with other Global South countries in areas such as food security, disease prevention and control, and climate change response. As a result, China's South-South cooperation on poverty reduction has grown into a multifaceted effort advancing on several fronts at once. At a time when multilateralism is under strain, China is also expanding cooperation with a diverse range of actors, including UN agencies and multilateral development banks, channeling the development knowledge and resources it has accumulated into concrete, effective poverty reduction projects. For example, through cooperation with international organizations such as the UN Development Programme, China's Juncao technology has been extended to more than 100 countries, creating jobs locally. The rural poor are the most direct beneficiaries.
In recent years, China has been committed to empowering the development of the Global South through more pragmatic and efficient economic and trade cooperation, adopting diversified measures such as signing free trade agreements, lowering market access barriers, and promoting two-way investment, thereby consolidating the economic foundation for poverty reduction. Notably, since May 1, China has granted zero-tariff treatment to 53 African countries with which it has diplomatic relations, significantly lowering the barriers for African products to enter the Chinese market. This policy has effectively driven the rapid growth of exports to China of distinctive African agricultural products such as coffee, avocados and citrus fruits, enabling large numbers of African smallholder farmers to integrate more deeply into global value chains, with a strong poverty reduction effect.
However, South-South cooperation on global poverty reduction still faces real constraints, including a widening development financing gap and inadequate cooperation mechanisms. As a responsible major country, China needs to keep deepening its South-South cooperation on poverty reduction and work with other Global South countries to tackle these challenges.
First, to help close the global poverty reduction funding gap, China could work through institutions such as the UN Office for South-South Cooperation to establish a dedicated poverty reduction fund. Guided by the principles of equality and mutual benefit, the fund can be led by the Global South, where Global South countries independently determine project needs, funding priorities, and monitoring and evaluation indicators, while prioritizing the least developed countries. Fund allocation should also be differentiated according to factors such as a project's public-good nature, repayment capacity and development potential, to make resource deployment more precise.
Second, the poverty reduction needs of the Global South are highly diverse, and no single global governance mechanism can achieve precise coverage or maximum effectiveness on its own. To this end, it would be worth exploring regular poverty reduction cooperation networks through multilateral platforms such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the BRICS mechanism. For instance, the SCO could set up a working group on poverty reduction and development and, with the help of financing platforms such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, strengthen financial support and the exchange of poverty reduction experience among member states.
Third, China can encourage the Global South to jointly build a South-South information-sharing and dynamic monitoring mechanism for poverty reduction, drawing on platforms such as relevant United Nations agencies, regional think tanks and university networks, to provide solid data support for coordinated decision-making. On this basis, it is necessary to deepen theoretical research on poverty reduction and development, systematically summarize the existing poverty reduction achievements and experience of the Global South, and integrate cutting-edge concepts such as green transition, digital governance, and climate resilience, so as to distill poverty reduction theories and paradigms of broad relevance to Global South countries.
Zhao Wenjie is an associate professor at the College of International Development and Global Agriculture at China Agricultural University. A K M Kanak Pervez is a professor at the Department of Agronomy and Agricultural Extension at the University of Rajshahi, Bangladesh. Zhu Lili is a lecturer at the College of Humanities and Development Studies at China Agricultural University.
The authors contributed this article to China Watch, a think tank powered by China Daily. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
Contact the editor at editor@chinawatch.cn.
