Author: Peter Drysdale, Editor, EAF

Brazil, Russia, India and China (the BRICs) were identified as the global economic powers of the future in a famous Goldman Sachs report in 2003.

Now South Africa has joined the club (the BRICS) and Indonesia is standing in the wings. Read more…

Author: Maria Monica Wihardja, CSIS, Indonesia

This year’s BRIC Summit, to be held in mid-April in China, will mark the entry of South Africa into membership of the group.

The economies of BRICS (now with the addition of ‘S’ for South Africa) will also prepare for the G20 Summit to be held later this year. BRICS, for which the combined economy is predicted to overtake the US by 2018, is not only an emerging economic power but also an increasingly influential political power; and China, acting as a global regime maker instead of a regime taker, is leading the way. Read more…

Author: Sanusha Naidu, Human Sciences Research Council

This year has certainly started off on a high note for South Africa’s foreign policy ambitions. Assuming its two-year non-permanent rotational seat on the United Nations Security Council and becoming the fifth member of BRIC, it is clear that the charm offensive of President Zuma’s 2010 BRIC foreign policy diplomacy has paid off.

Of course for some analysts, like Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neill, South Africa was not seen as a suitable candidate. O’Neill is recorded as saying: ‘It is not entirely obvious to me why the BRIC should have agreed to ask South Africa to join. Read more…

Author: Sourabh Gupta, Samuels International

Civilizational, cultural, and geographic neighbours, India and Indonesia share striking commonalities in their modern historical trajectories.

In both societies, European powers, the Dutch and the British, benefiting from the decline of tired Islamic land empires, had grafted colonial modes of exploitation that progressed fitfully from coast to hinterland to interior. Read more…

Author: He Wenping, CASS

At the end of 2010, the news that the BRIC forum would accept South Africa as a full member of the group caught international media attention, as the current chair of BRIC, Chinese President Hu Jintao issued an invitation letter to South African President Jacob Zuma, inviting him to attend the third BRIC leaders’ meeting to be held in China in 2011.

While addressing the significance of South Africa joining BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China), Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said that China believes South Africa’s accession will promote the development of BRIC and enhance cooperation among emerging market economies. Read more…

Author: Ernest Z. Bower, CSIS

Last week in the snowy Swiss enclave of Davos, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia threw down the rhetorical gauntlet and announced Indonesia’s plans to be a global player. Addressing a well-heeled World Economic Forum audience, he asserted Indonesia’s intent to influence global trends: ‘Asia is of course more than China, Japan and India,’ he said.

Mr Yudhoyono has a good case to make. Indonesia is the world’s fourth-largest country and third-largest democracy. By most criteria, Indonesia has a stronger claim on BRIC membership — the group including Brazil, Russia, India and China — than Russia. Read more…

Author: Takatoshi Ito, Graduate School of Economics, University of Tokyo

The G20 includes more Asian countries than any other global grouping, and it is expected to be a good forum for Asian countries to press their agenda.

The G20 Summit was created out of the chaos of the global financial crisis. After Lehman Brothers  collapsed in September 2008, global financial markets went into a tailspin. Securities markets were frozen as buyers disappeared. Read more…

Author: Jeffrey Frankel, Harvard

Korea has an opportunity to exercise historic leadership when it chairs the G20 meeting in Seoul. This will be the first time that a non-G7 country has hosted the G20 since the larger, more inclusive, group supplanted the smaller rich-country group in April 2009 as the premier steering committee for the world economy. With large emerging market and developing countries playing such expanded roles in the world economy, the G7 had lost legitimacy. It was high time to make the membership more representative. But there is also a danger that the G20 will now prove too unwieldy, in which case effective decision-making might then revert to the smaller group.

When countries like China and India used to demand a larger voice in world governance based on their large populations, they did not get very far. Read more…

Author: Peter Drysdale, ANU

The Cancun conference on climate change is now a little over a month away. As Stephen Howes observes in this week’s lead, ‘the contrast between the hype in the lead up to last year’s Copenhagen climate change conference and the subdued silence which precedes this year’s conference in Cancun in December could not be starker’. If Copenhagen collapsed under the weight of inflated expectations, Cancun cannot but surprise on the upside, so low are the expectations of what it might achieve.

Yet, the path from Copenhagen to Cancun has not been all downhill. Read more…

Author: Suiwah Leung, ANU

With an estimated GDP growth of 5.3 per cent in 2009 and a forecasted growth rate by the ADB of 6.7 per cent for 2010, Vietnam has not only survived the GFC in better shape than countries of comparable size in Asia, but has joined the ranks of middle-income countries by having its per capita GDP in excess of USD 1,000. This is certainly a remarkable achievement in two decades of economic reforms. With the leadership setting its sights on having Vietnam develop into an industrialised market economy by 2020, there are expectations in some quarters that foreign investors will again find Vietnam a very attractive investment destination after Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC).

Vietnam is no stranger to foreign investors. During the last two decades, the country has had an average FDI/GDP ratio of 5.9 per cent; the highest among many ASEAN countries during their respective periods of rapid growth from the mid-1970s to mid-1990s. Read more…

Author: Ramesh Thakur, University of Waterloo

There is a serious problem at the centre of the world order.  It cannot hold if the power and influence embedded in international institutions is seriously out of alignment with the distribution of power in the real world.

The importance of Brazil, China, India and other countries lies in their future economic potential that is already being translated into present political weight. We are seeing a major global rebalancing of economic, political and even moral relations between the West and the rest. Read more…

Author: Jeffrey Frankel, Harvard

Most observers judged as a failure the December meeting in Copenhagen of the Conference of Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). But then the usual way of judging such meetings is to look for a communiqué that voices sweeping aspirations, such as the G7 ‘decision’ at L’Aquila last summer to limit global warming to 2 degrees centigrade. In reality, without any evidence of countries agreeing what is each one’s share of the burden, such proclamations are worthless. Better tiny steps on the ground than giant flights of rhetoric.

Is there any sign of progress, even tiny steps? Read more…

Author: Brendan Kelly, former Country Director for China Affairs,  Office of the Secretary of Defense, United States

On June 16, the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India and China met in Yekaterinburg, Russia for the first formal BRIC summit.  The issue topping the meeting agenda was reform of the international financial and monetary system.   The BRICs offered a counterpoint and challenge to the G7/G8, which has served as the world’s economic ‘steering committee’ for the past few decades and meets next month in Italy.   Though light on substance, the BRICs’ message was clear: these growing economies want greater voice and representation in international financial institutions, and to a lesser extent, a greater role for their currencies in the international trade and monetary systems.

Over the past several months, leaders from Russia, China, Brazil and other countries have expressed concerns regarding the value and stability of the dollar, and have called for reducing the world’s dependence on the U.S. currency.  As the BRIC countries account for 42 per cent of global foreign reserves (and amount to about US$2.8 trillion), their pronouncements have produced strong market reactions.   Read more…

Author: Vo Tri Thanh, CIEM, Hanoi

There is still a great deal of uncertainty about how the world will come through the current financial and economic crisis. All countries formulated strategies to cushion the effects of the crisis and implemented national and cooperative measures to stabilize their financial systems. And we are grasping for a paradigm for the world economy that will sustain growth and development after the crisis.

The world economy has changed radically since the turn of the century. It was shaken by a series of major ‘virtual’ crises – the dot com crisis, the energy and food crises and non-traditional security issues like terrorism and SARS – that created an undercurrent of uncertainty, teetering on instability, before the present crisis hit . Economic and financial risks also increased due to global macro-imbalances, which are in turn associated with the process of deepening globalization and integration, and the emergence of a number of big new developing players such as China, India, and Brazil.

Read more…