Making the pie bigger

Editor's note: The world has undergone many changes and shocks in recent years. Enhanced dialogue between scholars from China and overseas is needed to build mutual understanding on many problems the world faces. For this purpose, the China Watch Institute of China Daily and the National Institute for Global Strategy, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, jointly present this special column: The Global Strategic Dialogue, in which experts from China and abroad will offer insightful views, analysis and fresh perspectives on long-term strategic issues of global importance.

The upcoming 16th BRICS summit scheduled for Oct 22-24 is all set to draw global attention amid rising discord between the US-led West and the non-West.

The host, Russia, is well poised to emerge as the favored destination for those developing countries that aspire to join the fast-growing group through intense lobbying. This indirectly grants Moscow a break from its toxic portrayal as an "international pariah" by the Washington-led West following the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

At the same time, 40 or more aspiring nations from the developing Global South are earnestly awaiting the outcome of their respective applications for BRICS membership. This means the alphabet soup of five founding members has now evolved into a potent group of global multilateral cooperation, and is touted as a force to reckon with in challenging the dominion of greenbacks across the world.

Beyond the excessive assertion that BRICS has been hyped as the driving force to dethrone the US currency, apart from being labeled a tool to defy the existing US-dictated global order, the underlying truth remains that more and more countries are indeed keen on bringing some kind of transformative reforms to the ailing global order.

While more emerging economies are echoing the call for settling their inter-nation trade payments with local currency, the BRICS — founded New Development Bank is set to increase the local currency lending to 30 percent of the total lending by 2026, to meet the rising needs of infrastructure and sustainable development across the developing and low-income nations. Never before have the Bretton Woods institutions been rivaled by an alternative multilateral development bank such as NDB.

The reason is rather simple. The expanded BRICS merely provides an alternative platform for the developing countries to embark on an egalitarian model of multilateral cooperation. As sovereign states, they are not obliged to be pliant to any major power, including the reigning hegemon. They reserve their unchallenged rights in determining what's best for their individual interests.

Over the years, bifurcation of the world into the West versus non-West, Global North versus Global South has been undermining the global order. Taking advantage of its primacy and global dominance, the West is making its former colonies in the non-West regions to fall easy prey to its persistent resource plundering. The hard-fought sovereignty has thus been hollowed out, leaving the new nation states with virtually no say in their governance.

Plainly put, Pax-Americana enables a hegemonic primacy representing only 12 percent of the global population to silence and lord over the remaining 88 percent population in the non-West. Precisely it's this sense of preclusion prevailing in the Global South that makes room for an alternative model of governance, which appears more egalitarian and meets the contemporary aspirations of the multipolar world.

Washington and its allies have to acknowledge, if not embrace, the emerging reality of multipolarity in the contemporary global dynamics. After all, no global hegemony has ever been perpetual in the annals of history.

BRICS, which rose from scratch, was initially dismissed as a motley grouping of developing countries of diverse interests and aspirations. As it expands with the induction of Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates, the growing bloc has the potential to emerge as the largest alliance with the largest area, population and resources in the world. Collectively, the bloc represents approximately 27 percent of the world's GDP and 45 percent of the world's population. It controls more than 60 percent of the global oil and gas reserves and includes the world's largest exporters and importers of petroleum if Saudi Arabia were to formally join it later. With this, certainly it has sufficient clout to reshape the global order.

Meanwhile, taking it as a potential threat to the sagging US preeminence, spin doctors from the West have been quick to respond with the bloc in their cross-hair of narratives. From their perspective, the diverse aspirations and geopolitical stance of the expanded BRICS is an exploitable Achilles' heel.

Motivated by such insidious agenda, the age-old Sino-India discord is again being resurrected to drive a further wedge between the two founding member states of BRICS. Alongside this, Washington's bid to endear itself to the Global South is conspicuously clear when it promised to reform the United Nations Security Council with the inclusion of representation from the Global South.

The recent call for adding two permanent seats for African nations to the UN Security Council, and an elected seat for a small-island developing nation by the Joe Biden administration was framed as "an effort to give more power to countries historically isolated from decision-making on international peace and security".

While the US overture is welcomed cautiously, it also reminds us of Washington's prior commitment to permanent representation from Latin America and the Caribbean, in addition to the long overdue unfulfilled promises made to India, Japan and Germany. Indeed, Washington is having a growing list of commitments to deliver.

Beyond the gesture of such a charming offensive, we could anticipate that the US' repeated offers of coveted permanent seats in the yet-to-expand security council are sufficient to trigger fierce jostling across the diverse Global South, including among the present member states of the expanded BRICS. This sets to complicate the inter-state relations within the bloc. Perhaps, it may also explain why the Western mouthpieces are optimistic that the rapid expansion of the BRICS would ultimately hasten the weakening of its intra-bloc cohesiveness.

Be that as it may, the collective West generally remains hawkish to the bloc. It's not too far-fetched to suspect that the "carrot" of UN Security Council permanent seats might just be a strategic move to sow discord among the Global South countries in the zero-sum interest of the West.

Under the prism of Washington and Brussels, hosting the BRICS summit in Russia this year will only facilitate the host to weaponize the bloc as an anti-West geopolitical tool. Little would they endeavor to compete with the expanded BRICS in positive light to prove the preponderance of its global governance to humanity, much less in fostering collaboration to bridge the gap between the Global North and the Global South in pursuit of enduring peace and common prosperity for the world.

The author is president of the Belt and Road Initiative Caucus for Asia Pacific (BRICAP). The author contributed this article to China Watch, a think tank powered by China Daily.

Contact the editor at editor@chinawatch.cn.