President Xi's BRICS summit speech hailed

China will continue to be committed to the revitalization of the global economy and the resumption of the international order from the COVID-19 pandemic, as indicated by President Xi Jinping's statement at the 13th BRICS summit, an African researcher said.

At the 13th BRICS Summit for the five major emerging economies -- Brazil, China, Russia, India, and South Africa -- which represent a total population of about 3.3 billion, President Xi mapped out a strategy for attaining world peace and development and advancing the building of a community with a shared future for humankind, said Dennis Munene, executive director of the China–Africa Center at the Africa Policy Institute.

The summit, themed "Advance BRICS Cooperation to Meet Common Challenges Together" was held virtually on Thursday.

Advancing his thoughts on a community with a shared future for humankind, President Xi's proposed approaches for strengthening unity and enhancing the quality of practical cooperation are the silver bullet that we as a civilization need to safeguard the global community and rebuild our economy despite the persistent effects of COVID-19, Munene said.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the world needs to strengthen international cooperation on vaccines, which has been President Xi's clarion call at the summit in fighting vaccine imperialism policies advanced by some of the developed countries to disfranchise the developing countries which have been highly affected by COVID-19, he said.

Prior to the summit,China made a commitment to provide a total of 2 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines by the end of this year to over 100 countries and international organizations. President Xi proposed at the summit an early launch of a virtual version of the BRICS Vaccine R&D Center, key in achieving sustainable cooperation in fighting COVID-19, to advance joint research and production and mutual recognition of standards, Munene said.