Frontier Strategy Group Expert Adviser, David Wolf recently wrote the following on his Silicon Hutong blog:
While the Fourth BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) summit was nearly three months ago, the meta-message that is emerging from the aftermath is that these countries do not yet form anything resembling a bloc of interests.
Ruchita Beri’s short piece (linked above) is guardedly optimistic about the grouping, but if you read between the lines you can almost feel the divergence of interests that is pulling this grouping apart. Beri, a senior researcher at India’s Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, gently suggests that China is part of the problem.
“While the BRICS grouping does provide an opportunity for each member to play an important role on the global stage, one of the challenges that it faces is cohesiveness. Take the issue of the BRICS development bank. While it is indeed a laudable initiative, the challenge lies in aligning the differing interests of the member countries. Moreover, other members of the grouping are wary of China’s domination over the bank given that China holds very large foreign exchange reserves ($ 3 trillion).”
All of this serves to underscore the real elephant in the room, which is the fact that while some of the BRICS might trust each other, most are having a hard time trusting China. As it considers its soft power challenges, China also needs to see that being a trustworthy player in the global system would do a lot toward making it influential (rather than disruptive) in such international groupings, and in turn toward making those groupings influential.
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