China and the Global South: A Geostrategic Perspective

American politicians and intellectuals consider the China Dream a conspicuous symbol of the country’s ambition as a maritime and global power across the Pacific Ocean. I am, however, reluctant to side with those analysts who regard the China Dream as being equivalent to its aspiration of rising as a Pacific power. Instead, this paper argues that in facilitating the China Dream, over the next few decades, the Chinese government is and will be more interested in engaging with the Global South than with any other regions of the world, particularly in its military engagement in Africa and the Indian Ocean. Even though the Pacific Ocean is no less geopolitically salient, I suggest that the Pacific has not been prioritized as the foremost strategic theatre by the Chinese Communist Party since the previous century.