GLOBAL SOUTH

The Global South’s Playbook for Navigating a U.S.–China Rivalry

By Jack Zhai & Shan Qi

In the corridors of power in Washington and Beijing, the narrative is the same: the world is splitting into two camps, and everyone must choose a side. But if you stand in a boardroom in Brasília, a factory floor in Monterrey, or a tech hub in Lagos, the reality looks very different.

The Global South is not choosing. It is leveraging.

For decades, emerging markets were treated as passive recipients of foreign aid or foreign direct investment. Today, they are becoming the ultimate swing voters in a geopolitical duopoly. They have realized that in a world of two desperate suitors, the prize goes to the one who plays them against each other.

The Auction for Infrastructure

Take Brazil’s cloud computing market. It is one of the few places on earth where American hyperscalers like AWS and Microsoft go head-to-head with Chinese giants like Huawei and Alibaba Cloud in a fair fight.

For a Brazilian CTO, this isn't a question of ideology; it's an auction. When Huawei builds data centers in São Paulo, offering aggressive pricing and localized support, it forces Amazon to lower costs and improve service. Brazil’s government, maintaining a policy of "strategic non-alignment," welcomes both. They use Chinese capital to build the physical layer—fiber optics and 5G towers—while utilizing American software to run the application layer.

This is the new playbook: unbundle the tech stack and buy the best components from each superpower. The result is a digital infrastructure that is owned by neither.

Mexico: The Art of Being the "Third Place"

Mexico is playing an even more dangerous, high-stakes game. As the United States pushes for "nearshoring" to secure its supply chains away from China, Mexico has positioned itself as the essential middleman.

Walk through the industrial parks of Nuevo León, and you will see the reality of "Made in Mexico." It often looks a lot like "Assembled in Mexico with Chinese components." Chinese manufacturers, facing tariffs and export controls, are pouring billions into Mexican factories to retain access to the North American market.

Washington calls this "security-shoring." Beijing sees it as a backdoor. Mexico sees it as leverage. By becoming the indispensable buffer zone, Mexico extracts capital and technology transfer from both sides, turning geopolitical friction into domestic GDP.

The Liquido Strategy: Building Sovereignty Through Code

The most sophisticated resistance, however, isn’t happening in trade deals. It’s happening in the code.

Dependence on foreign payment rails—whether SWIFT or Visa—has long been a vulnerability for the Global South. Enter companies like Liquido, a payment infrastructure firm born from this precise anxiety.

Operating across Latin America, Liquido doesn’t just process payments; it localizes them. It builds deep integrations with local payment methods—PIX in Brazil, SPEI in Mexico, PSE in Colombia—creating a mesh of financial connectivity that bypasses the traditional Western banking hegemony.

This isn't just fintech; it's sovereignty. By building their own financial pipes, these markets inoculate themselves against sanctions and external shocks. It mirrors the strategy of 99 Taxi in Brazil, which utilized Chinese investment not to become a Chinese subsidiary, but to build a local giant capable of fighting Uber to a standstill.

The Rise of the Non-Aligned Tech Stack

In Africa, this push for sovereignty is taking legal form. Nations like Nigeria and Kenya are no longer content to have their citizens’ data strip-mined by Silicon Valley algorithms. New "digital sovereignty" laws are mandating that financial and telecom data be hosted locally, forcing global tech giants to build physical infrastructure on the continent rather than just extracting value from the cloud.

Senegal has gone further, replicating aspects of China’s data governance model to assert control over its digital borders. It is a clear signal: if the West wants access to the next billion users, it will have to play by local rules.

The Third Path

The mistake policymakers in the U.S. and China make is assuming that the Global South wants to be saved by one or led by the other.

The truth is found in the "Third Path." Emerging markets are building their own parallel systems—using stablecoins like USDT to bypass volatile local currencies, using Chinese hardware to run American software, and using their own startups to keep the profits at home.

In this new Great Game, the winner won’t be the superpower that demands total loyalty. It will be the one that accepts that in the 21st century, loyalty is dead. Adaptation is everything.

Power has two suitors. But the Global South is choosing itself.

Digital black markets

Myanmar’s Digital Black Markets: The New Frontier of Global Finance

By Jack Zhai & Shan Qi

On the banks of the Moei River, dividing Thailand from Myanmar, stands a city that technically shouldn’t exist. Shwe Kokko is a $15 billion sprawl of neon-lit casinos, luxury villas, and dormitory blocks rising out of the jungle. It has its own power grid...