The BRICS grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa will next year add another six nations to that number, as Beijing and Moscow push for the loose collection of emerging economies to evolve into a beefier policy and ideas alternative to Western global hegemony led by the US.
Xi Jinping, China’s powerful leader, on Thursday hailed the “historic” expansion, which he said would be a “new starting point for BRICS cooperation.”
This year has seen “the most open and explicit push from Xi Jinping to turn the BRICS into a kind of ‘anti-hegemonic’ vehicle,” said Andrew Small, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund.
Xi’s speeches have been “a blow-by-blow case against the U.S. alliance system and U.S.-dominated financial systems,” as well as a pitch for building “alternative, non-Western frameworks” for developing countries to trade, Small said.
Sanctions targeting Russia over the war in Ukraine have added urgency to China’s effort to create alternative global financial structures and supply chains resilient to Western disruption.
Source: NYT, news agencies.
