In 2012, a series of posters advertising the London- based HSBC bank caught the eye of international travelers in airports worldwide. Hung on walls alongside moving walk-ways, the posters featured ironic or humorous photographs, each with a sentence above it starting with the words “In the future.” Created by the preeminent international advertising agency J. Walter Thompson and designed to portray HSBC as forwardthinking, the marketing campaign highlighted different ways in which HSBC was at the cutting edge of banking and commerce worldwide.

One poster in particular is relevant to this book. The poster showed a photograph of a gray Chinese terracotta warrior with a steely gaze. Everything about the image was similar to the classic photographs of the terracotta warrior statues except for one detail: instead of boots the warrior wore bright yellow and green flip-flops. Over the photo was the line, “In the future, South–South trade will be norm, not novelty.” Additional text elaborated on this line: “Direct trade between fast growing nations is reshaping the world economy. HSBC is one of the leading banks for trade settlement between China and Latin America. There's a new world emerging. Be part of it.” The HSBC poster provides an ideal entry point for a critical examination of South–South trade: the ideas conjured by the terracotta warrior photograph and the poster in general are a perfect metaphor for the pervasiveness—and the complexity—of the economic activity that characterizes this whole vast subject.

The virtues of trade between and among countries that belong to what has long been called “the global South” or simply “the South” are now trumpeted not only by giant corporations and major branding agencies but also by public national and international institutions. In 2003, the UN General Assembly decided to observe September 12 every year as the United Nations Day for South– South Cooperation, in recognition of how trade and financial exchanges between two or more countries within the global South is “an important element of international cooperation for development,” offering “viable opportunities for developing countries and countries with economies in transition.” The assembly chose that particular day in commemoration of the adoption, in Buenos Aires on September 12, 1978, of the Buenos Aires Plan of Action for Promoting and Implementing Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries.