The Wall Street Journal
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April 12, 2011
China this week will host a summit of leaders from the so-called BRICS countries—Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—as it looks to boost the group's profile as a platform for emerging economies.
By Owen Fletcher
BEIJING—China this week will host a summit of leaders from the so-called BRICS countries as it looks to boost the group's profile as a platform for emerging economies to gain stronger leverage over more advanced countries.
The meeting is the first of its kind to include South Africa as well as Brazil, Russia, India and China, a group that could band together to push for international financial reforms favoring developing countries. The summit, which coincides with meetings of the International Monetary Fund in Washington this week, is set to discuss global financial and economic issues like commodity-price fluctuations—a topic on which China hopes the countries can reach a common position before a Group of 20 summit in Cannes, France, in November. A joint position on such economic issues could boost the BRICS countries' joint heft in G-20 talks as the larger group debates how to address global economic imbalances.
The meeting of the countries' leaders on the island of Hainan on Thursday, preceded by a BRICS trade-minister meeting Wednesday, is likely to produce positive rhetoric about cooperation among the five emerging economies and some type of call for reform in the international financial system, but beneath the surface the group's effectiveness faces a number of obstacles, not least disagreements among its own members.
The term BRIC was coined by Goldman Sachs economist Jim O'Neill in 2001 to call attention to four rising economies that he thought would play an increasingly large global role. For years it was treated largely as investor shorthand for big emerging markets.
The countries themselves have developed it into an organization designed in part to promote the interests of developing countries much like the G-7 does for developed economies. Adding countries like South Africa to the group serves that goal, widening its focus to include more of the developing world outside fast-growing countries like China and India.
In 2009, the four BRIC countries held their first summit in Russia and discussed reform of the international financial system and the possibility of a new dominant reserve currency to replace the U.S. dollar.
As host this year, China invited South Africa to join, and is now formally calling the group BRICS. Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Wu Hailong said this month that other emerging-market countries have expressed interest in joining the group, and that China is open to the idea. He didn't say which countries. The group doesn't have a clear admission process. In the case of South Africa, Chinese and Brazilian officials in recent months simply said the original BRIC members had agreed to add the new country.
The group's simple moniker glosses over the fact that its members are vastly different. India, Brazil and South Africa are vibrant democracies with cacophonous opposition parties and civil societies that stand in contrast to the more authoritarian systems of Russia and China.
China's economy, the world's second largest, is nearly three times the size of Brazil's, close to four times those of India and Russia, and about 16 times that of South Africa. Russia and Brazil are huge commodity exporters. China, among the world's biggest importers of many commodities, says rising commodity prices have helped fuel the high inflation rate it is working to tamp down.
The countries also differ on exchange-rate policies. Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, who arrived Monday in Beijing for a state visit ahead of the BRICS summit, has grown increasingly vocal against Beijing's tight control of the yuan's value, which keeps its exports relatively cheap in foreign markets.
Mr. Wu, of China's Foreign Ministry, said the yuan's exchange rate isn't on the agenda for the BRICS meeting.
Analysts say disagreements on such issues could hobble the group's influence, as could its exclusion so far of major developing countries like Indonesia, and its exclusion of most of the world's biggest economic powers if it remains a group for developing countries only.
"I'm a little skeptical that they're going to emerge as a global force in shaping the world economy," said China expert Nick Lardy of the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
South Africa has rejoiced at joining a grouping that's seen as independent from Western powers. Over the years, Pretoria has attempted to craft a foreign policy that promotes the interests of African countries and the developing world, although how it will do that through the BRICS formation still isn't clear.
Still, concern about China has grown among South African businesses as the Asian country has surpassed Germany in recent years as South Africa's biggest source of imports. At a breakfast discussion about the upcoming summit, some industry leaders expressed concern that China would cajole South Africa into subverting economic interests for political symbolism, leaving local companies and workers vulnerable to a flood of Chinese goods.
China's government has long positioned itself as something of a champion of the developing world, and in turn looks to other relatively poor countries to side with it against developed countries on issues like human rights and climate change.
Emerging economies "need to further reinforce and improve their cooperation, coordinate their stances and actively participate in global rule-making, so that the emerging and developing economies can have more voices and rights of development," scholars at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a state-run think tank, said in a recent paper.
Zhu Feng, deputy director of Peking University's Center for International and Strategic Studies in Beijing, said the BRICS countries are aware of the group's limits as a counterweight to U.S. power. Still, he said it could help China ease some tensions with fellow emerging powers, and that expanding it serves Beijing's longer-term goals. "For China it is an important goal for emerging economies to be able to produce cooperation and unity," he said.
Peter Wonacott contributed to this article.
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