Goa Summit to promote putting more proposals into operation

President Xi Jinping meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin in western India's Goa during the sidelines of the BRICS summit. [Provided to China Daily]

By watching the path that BRICS has followed, you may be surprised to find how fast it has established itself as a key player in the international arena and a facilitator for the cooperation among the five member states. The Goa Declaration, the fruit of the 8th BRICS Summit, is the freshest and most valid demonstration of that.

The main body of the joint declaration adopted by the 1st BRIC Summit had 16 paragraphs. Today, the Goa Declaration has 109 sections. As the cooperation has moved from the state of principle to the state of program, even more words will be needed to present its many concrete achievements. For example, the New Development Bank (NDB), proposed in 2013 and formally opened in 2015, has approved its first set of loans and issued its first set of green bonds in RMB.

The Contingent Reserve Arrangement, trying to strengthen the financial safety of the member states, has started operating too. These, amongst other progress, are highlighted in the Goa Declaration. With the plans being quickly implemented, BRICS already has an action team instead of a talk shop.

The range of the cooperation has also greatly broadened. When the 1st BRIC Summit was launched in 2009, it mainly focused on economic issues in the context of the ongoing global financial crisis.

In 2010, South Africa's membership marked the upgrade from BRIC to BRICS, bridging the mechanism with the African continent, which has both economic and political implications.

Since then, more security agendas have been introduced. The BRICS countries are clearly opposed to unilateral military interventions or economic sanctions.

Meanwhile, they emphasize that no State should strengthen its security at the expense of the security of others. On certain issues, the BRICS countries are more open to specify their common position, like a call for IMF to fulfill its reform timetable, a higher expectation for UN Peacekeeping Operations and a promotion for two-state solutions of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Chu Yin is an associate professor at the University of International Relations, and a research fellow at the Center for China and Globalization.