The Brics countries want to get reinforcements for their attack on the western world order. Chinese President Xi Jinping emphasized at a summit in Johannesburg that the group must develop. “We must speed up the process of expansion of the Brics to include more countries in the Brics family,” Xi said. “In this way we can combine our strengths and abilities to make the world order more just and balanced.”
The current world order is unfair in Xi’s view. Without naming them, the Chinese president blamed the United States and the G7, which includes the United States, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Canada and the United Kingdom. International rules should be written and obeyed by all countries, said Xi, rather than dictated by those with the “strongest muscles and loudest voices.” Getting together in exclusive groups and packaging your own rules as international law is even more difficult to accept. The Brics, Xi demanded, must practice “true multilateralism.”
Brics was founded in 2009 as a merger of the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China. A year later saw the first expansion: South Africa joined the group, which is hosting its 15th summit this year. China has been trying for years to get other countries on board. South Africa and Russia support the plan. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi also said on Wednesday he was in favor of expanding the area.
It still seems controversial how this should be extended
Only Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva did not comment directly on the possible expansion. The interest of many countries to join shows the growing importance of the Brics, he said briefly. According to the South African government, more than 20 countries have officially applied for membership. Just as many have expressed interest in joining. However, there is no complete list of the states.
For years, India and Brazil were seen as slowing down the process of territorial expansion. South Africa also kept a low profile for a long time. On the one hand, the three countries are worried that their position will be weakened if new members join. On the other hand, the three democracies belonging to the group of five, unlike Russia and China, are also trying to maintain good relations with the US and Europe. He worries that the expansion of the Brics will further increase Chinese influence within the group and reinforce its anti-Western orientation. But Beijing appears to have succeeded in dispelling any underlying doubts about the Brics’ expansion.
However, how the expansion should look concrete is still controversial. The implementation of the joint declaration and press conference by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa was actually scheduled for Wednesday afternoon in Johannesburg. But both were canceled at short notice and postponed to Thursday. The South African government spokesman gave the only reason why further discussions were needed.
On the one hand, the content of these discussions should be the question of how new countries can join the Brics: as full members with all rights? Or as a member of an association with limited voting rights? It is also conceivable that there are different forms of belonging with varying degrees of closeness to the core group – for example in the form of a loose circle of friends surrounding the full member.
Second, there’s the question of which states are eligible. The United Arab Emirates, Bangladesh, Egypt and Uruguay, which are already members or prospective members of the Brics NDB development bank, are promising applicants. But many other countries are trafficked – from Senegal and Argentina to Iran, Syria and Venezuela. Depending on the country, Brazil’s and India’s resistance will likely be very different. The possibility of the last three joining, for example, will do little to allay their fears that the growing group of Brics could be turned into an anti-Western bastion by China.
But it’s not just the apparent dissension between the Brics that should cloud the viewpoint of the meeting in Johannesburg. The group will have to postpone its most ambitious project, other than expansion, before the summit: a massive attack on the US dollar against its own currency Brics. The project doesn’t appear to have gone beyond its early stages. It seems that the obstacles are greater than expected. The Brics now want to strengthen the role of their respective national currencies in international trade, as Russian President Vladimir Putin emphasized, among other things, at the Johannesburg Summit.
