By SHEN YI
THE Ninth BRICS Summit will soon take place in September in Xiamen. The concept of "BRICS" was formed 10 years ago. Reviewing the past and looking into the future, it is foreseeable that BRICS will continue to grow and transcend in the coming decade with more pragmatic cooperation being carried out.
Prerequisite: Uniting Together
To make BRICS a major impetus for global governance reform, the BRICS nations must first improve themselves and unite together.
In the first decade, the BRICS countries saw the formation of their own unique mechanism, which evolved from a simple term raised by a financial institution into a substantial existence that has had a great impact on the global governance. This was how the BRICS countries and their mechanism came into being.
As BRICS enters its second phase, featuring relatively mature and stable development, the BRICS countries face even more daunting challenges, such as how to withstand the deconstructive influence from the outside world and sustain a steady impetus for substantial reform on global governance. To tackle these challenges, the BRICS countries must strengthen their voice and bond together. Who will have a greater say in defining the BRICS nations? The question concerns the existence of BRICS, and the platform's development and representativeness.
Some media and research institutions from Europe and the U.S., undoubtedly, hope to serve a decisive role in the future of BRICS. For the BRICS countries, having a greater say hinges on their own development as well as cooperation and coordination between each other.
The cohesion among the BRICS countries can be built by overcoming the disparities, divergences, and even frictions among each other, in a bid to effectively counter the deconstructive influence from the outside world. In this regard, a typical example would be the U.S. trying to draw countries in the South Asian Sub-continent over to its side. For the BRICS member countries, it's crucial to act with strategic wisdom and foresight – focusing on the long-term interests, instead of small or short-term benefits. From a historical perspective, the emergence and development of BRICS is inevitable, corresponding with the trend of multi-polarization. As a cooperation mechanism, however, the founding of BRICS is a happenstance. In the coming decade, the self-development and cohesion will, to a large extent, decide the future of BRICS and related mechanisms.
Strategic Goals: Making Substantial Contributions
The BRICS countries need to find their own positions in the global arena and make substantial contributions, so that they can raise their status and expand their influence in the global governance. This is one of the strategic goals that BRICS must achieve for future development.
Since 2008, when the global financial crisis broke out, the globalization led by developed economies in Europe and the U.S. was bogged down. Furthermore, anti-globalization started to prevail in 2016. The trend reflected that developed countries were no longer able to dominate the right of steering globalization due to their internal structural problems, such as the flaws of their distribution systems. Such anti-globalization waves also signify that the current global governance framework has reached certain growth boundaries. The progress of globalization will neither stop nor reverse. What needs to be adjusted and changed is the superstructure, especially the distribution of decision-making power of relevant mechanisms and their operations. By this token, China and other BRICS nations will be offered historical opportunities.
In the coming decade, the BRICS countries should take the opportunity to make substantial contributions, so as to raise their status and expand their influence in the global governance. Here, the substantial contributions include promoting the benign progress of globalization, driving the reform on global governance, and seeking new development models and paths that will meet diversified needs. In this process, the BRICS countries should withstand the influence of the Western world and stick to their own development path, so as to better participate in building the global governance framework.
Mission: Improving Global Governance
It is the BRICS countries' historical mission in their future development to sharpen their capabilities and not only participate in, but also actively promote the reform of global governance and expand the fields of pragmatic cooperation.
It is difficult to reconcile the conflicts between the supply and demand of international public goods under the current global governance system, resulting in the formation of the BRICS mechanism. The current global governance system, taking shape after World War II, was established by the U.S.-led Western bloc. Under this system, the global economic governance system operates with the Bretton Woods System as the core, and the UN as the center of the global security governance system. Western developed countries have long played a dominant role in making rules and explanations about the system. However, emerging economies and developing countries have been labeled as inferior in terms of their voice and influence; therefore their interest demands have often been ignored.
The outbreak of the global financial crisis in 2008 exposed the drawbacks of the IMF – the core international financial institution – in terms of the insufficient supply of international public goods such as policy supervision and rescue programs. With these caveats, developed countries realized the importance of having developing countries participate in tackling issues like global policy coordination and crisis assistance. The G20, an informal dialogue mechanism that covers major developed and developing countries under the IMF framework, has become a key platform for developed and developing economies to converse on global economic governance. The BRICS countries, which are all G20 members, often arranged side meetings during the G20 summits, as they share a similar standpoint in dealing with many issues and have common requirements on the reform of current global governance. It also propelled the formation of the BRICS mechanism.
Innovation: Key to Sustainable Development
Since the formation of BRICS, it has always strived to transcend itself to seek better development. Because of this spirit, BRICS has evolved from a marketing concept of Goldman Sachs to a substantial mechanism, broadened its mission from global economic governance to reforming global governance system, and improved itself from a policy coordinator into a comprehensive mechanism that focuses on pragmatic cooperation. In the coming decade, BRICS will continue to expand the fields of pragmatic cooperation that are related to national strategy and people's lives, which remains the key for the BRICS countries to achieve further development.
Specifically speaking, the BRICS countries should try to make innovations in the following aspects:
The first is to deepen their cooperation on international politics and security, making their voice louder and advancing the reform of the global governance system. To seek pragmatic political and security cooperation tops the agenda of this year's summit. Reviewing the development of the post-Cold War global system, democratic reforms modeled after Western countries, military alliances inherited from the Cold War period, and military-centric approaches against terrorism have not made the world safer. The current political and security systems, therefore, need to be repaired and improved to create a benign environment. In this process, the BRICS countries enjoy a particular advantage and are able to make new contributions.
Second, is to improve the BRICS credit rating agencies. Based on the experience of the New Development Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, we should make our own voice heard in global economic and credit rating systems, so as to provide global public goods in demand.
Third, is to establish and improve a new development model with inclusive growth as the core and intermesh it with the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. The BRICS countries can, through their strategic cooperation framework, quicken the pace of establishing a community of a shared future for all humankind.
As a Chinese saying goes, a man of virtue should strive continuously to strengthen himself, just as heaven keeps moving forward vigorously. After a decade of remarkable development, BRICS will surely find a new path to development and transcendence, and make its due contribution to the world.
SHEN YI is an associate professor and director of the Center for BRICS Studies at Fudan University.