From Overseas Press

China seeks heft for BRICS

(chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2011-04-14 15:36

As host of BRICS summit this year, China seeks to boost the group's profile as a platform for emerging economies to gain stronger leverage over more advanced countries, said an article in the Wall Street Journal on April 13.

According to the article, this is the first summit of its kind to include South Africa as well as Brazil, Russia, India and China, a group that could join and act 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 expected 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, said the article, could boost the BRICS countries' joint heft in G-20 talks on how to address global economic imbalances.

Actually,BRICS countries have developed into an organization aimed 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, which would attract more of the developing world to join it, said the article.

As BRICS members differ on some issues, analysts call for more profound cooperation. 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.