The recent confirmation by China’s President Xi Jinping that he will host the 14th annual Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) summit later this year has come at a time there seems to be a widening chasm between the rich Global North and the poor Global South on many levels.
The theme of the 2022 summit will be “Foster High-quality BRICS Partnership, Usher in a New Era for Global Development”. It is time for BRICS to offer the much needed leadership to the rest of the developing world. By now it is clear that there are many structural barriers placed in the development path of poor countries and only the self-determination found in the emerging BRICS economies can transform the fortunes of struggling economies.
Moreover, the Russia-Ukraine war has exposed the hypocrisy and double standards of the West for punishing their ideological nemesis by locking it out of their economies through both punitive and selfish economic sanctions. Russia would not have worried if much of its wealth was domiciled in the economies of BRICS. But experience is the best teacher, and these are issues that might be discussed with finality in the forthcoming summit.
BRICS camaraderie has been put to the test after Russia went to war with Ukraine. It is instructive that the other members have resisted attempts to coerce them to slap sanctions on their member or directly condemn President Vladimir Putin for the offensive. Well, empathy mixed with some sort of collective responsibility.
This is a great precedence that shows developing countries the need to stand together or fall apart. They must unite in matters of principle and resist coercion to interfere in the internal affairs of one another. BRICS should act as a moral bastion for countries wavering on allegiances. Lack of moral courage has been the bane of many developing countries who fear losing certain privileges from the world’s hegemonic forces.
Public health and vaccine cooperation are among the key areas of BRICS cooperation this year. Fighting the COVID-19 pandemic through the solidarity of developing countries shows that BRICS as a concept of the Global South has come of age. The online launch of the BRICS Vaccine Research and Development (R&D) Center on March 22 marked a major milestone in this regard. The high caliber of participants from across the BRICS was testament of the high level of governments’ representation seeking partnership in finding solutions to global challenges.
The team included ministers of science and technology, ministers of health, heads of national centers and experts from vaccine R&D institutions. The approach includes building of Internet-based virtual centers to form a network of BRICS vaccine R&D centers, and then the subsequent establishment of physical centers.
This initiative has been necessitated by the hard lessons the West has taught the rest of the world through the so called COVID-19 vaccine apartheid, and even sheer malice by hoarding excess vaccine supplies until near expiration date before selling and donating them to developing countries. China’s leadership in vaccine development and distribution has brought vaccine equality and filled much of this gap for developing countries.
In addition to this BRICS vaccine and testing R&D exchange and cooperation model impacting greatly on the healthcare systems of the BRICS grouping and other developing countries, it can be replicated across many other sectors in the socio-economic spectrum. This includes promoting scientific and technological cooperation among themselves.
While all the BRICS countries have definitely a lot to share, China’s current chairmanship widens the scope and enhances the capacity of the other countries to dare initiating different paradigm shifts that are relevant to the Global South. The BRICS and the developing world as a whole have many great things to learn from China’s economic development. A lot of this is based on “Xiconomics” which, as the name suggests, spells the transformational economic policies of President Xi that have propelled the country to the second largest economy status.
Xiconomics encompasses Xi’s vision and inspiration on China’s economic governance, showing the President’s delicate but perfect balance between free markets on one hand, and the government’s behind-the-scenes regulatory role in ensuring these markets function efficiently. This is the kind of dispensation that developing countries need to grow their economies.
The pressure on many poor countries by some bilateral and multilateral financial institutions to fully open up and liberalize their economies has been counterproductive. It has created economic stagnation in some cases and retardation in others. China’s blending of efficient markets and favorable policies has become an inspiration for many developing countries who see it as a path for economic take off.
The 16-year-old BRICS mechanism has become an important platform for strengthening mutually beneficial cooperation not just among the membership of the five countries, but also an important force for the evolution of international order, the improvement of global governance and the promotion of common development.
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