This research offers a concise retrospect on the South-South Coalition Strategy within multilateral trade negotiations of the GATT/WTO framework. The SSC strategy evolved in the postwar era, when the South integrated itself to demand for a New International Economic Order featured by fairness of outcome in international economic rules and activities. It then encountered an opponent trend of neo-liberalism, through which the South practically decided to sectoral exchange of economic interests with the North. From the new millennium onward, the South is learning to adopt a more issue-specific SSC strategy in trade negotiations. Although a question is arising for the future of SSC because of some emerging nations rising out from the traditional South group, a timely reflection from an evolutionary perspective would facilitate the understanding of the SSC strategy for weak countries to establish a fairer international economic order.

The great career of Global South-South Coalition has just entered its fifties, if we take the establishment of Group 77 in 1964 as its origin. For the past five decades, the course of SSC has seen its ups and downs. Confucian philosophy of China advocates for a comprehensive self-reflection every decade, so as to comb past experience for the sake of future self-improvement. At this historical turning point, it is of necessity to retrospect, while bearing contemporary international economic circumstances in mind, the SSC’s past accomplishments and difficulties, in order to re-affirm people’s confidence of this long-term strategy, and to avoid tactical short-sightedness. In this way, the career of Global SSC could hopefully get ready to sail out once again for new accomplishments. For Chinese scholars, it is also their responsibility to review the New China’s self-positioning on the course of SSC, and to make the world academia hear a voice from China.