The developing world’s G7 would like a word
The real lesson of the Rio Brics summit is that it isn’t meant to be a forum to be anti-American, but a place where countries bid to lead the Global South
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IT LIKES to think of itself as the developing world’s equivalent of the Group of Seven (G7). Yet, unlike the G7, the Brics bloc – designed for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, but now expanded to 11 members – has sharply diverging interests.
It includes energy exporters such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as importers like India; material-hungry manufacturing giants such as China, and commodity superpowers the likes of Brazil; moderate democracies like Indonesia, and extremist theocracies such as Iran.
If there’s one thing that almost all of them have in common, however, it’s that they want to ensure the grouping’s most powerful member, China, doesn’t dominate.
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