The BRICS Studies

Theories and Issues

Xu Xiujun

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000067798
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Global Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Given their immense potential for development and representation of a new international political and economic order, the BRICS countries have become a strong nascent force on the global stage. However, as overall economic growth continues to slow down, and the geopolitical situation becomes more complex, the BRICS countries are facing a series of new challenges that require further development in the way they cooperate with one another.

This volume offers a panoramic view of cooperation between the BRICS countries in the light of these new challenges. The editors reveal that policy coordination has been strengthened, bringing into play complementary advantages as viable ways for promoting robust, sustainable, and balanced growth in the world economy. They argue that the experience gained, and lessons learned in the development of and cooperation between the BRICS countries has offered a positive role model for cooperation between other countries as well as providing valuable lessons for research in international politics.

Students and scholars in international relations and politics will benefit from this volume.

1The BRICS studies

Academic approach and frontier issues

Xu Xiujun

Since Jim O’Neill put forward the concept of “BRIC”¹ in 2001, the term has invited extensive attention internationally, and more and more scholars have put the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) together for BRICS studies. In 2009, the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India and China held their first meeting in Yekaterinburg, Russia, and since then cooperation among the four countries and their cooperation with the outside world has gradually been on top of BRIC agendas, and BRIC studies have become increasingly extensive and in-depth. Currently, such studies involve a wide variety of areas with a particularly prominent discipline-crossing characteristic, and this offers rich materials for academic exploration through BRICS studies. To clearly present a picture of academic studies over the past 15 years on the issues concerning the BRICS’s development and cooperation, and to promote further studies in the future, this book, based on the review of the development and cooperation of the BRICS countries – South Africa joined in 2010 – explores academic approaches to BRICS studies. This book does so from the perspective of the evolution and expansion of study topics, study perspectives, study methods, study paths and study levels, and puts forward some hot research topics and frontier issues based on contentious academic viewpoints.

1. New trend of BRICS’s development and cooperation

In general terms, the BRICS countries came together to form a close grouping because of the shared interests of the five countries. Despite divergences in terms of their history, cultures and social systems, the BRICS countries boast a huge development potential as vigorous emerging-market countries and constitute both a new force in the global economic system and as an active builder of the new international political and economic order. On numerous significant international and regional issues, the BRICS countries share the same or similar views and are all dedicated to pushing for world economic growth, improving global economic governance, promoting democratization of international relations and maintaining world peace. Since the founding of the BRICS cooperative mechanism, the five member countries have achieved a series of pragmatic cooperation fruits in the fields of trade, investment, finance, economic development and people-to-people exchanges and have continuously pushed the cooperative mechanism towards a new stage. In the meantime, the development and cooperation of BRICS has also encountered some new problems and challenges.

1.1 A continuous rise in economic strength but with differentiated economic growth

As a representative mechanism of global emerging economies, BRICS’s rise has drawn extensive attention from the international community. The term “rise” means the full elevation of comprehensive national strength, including economic, political, military, scientific and technological and cultural strength, but the rise of BRICS is particularly reflected in the rapid expansion of its economic scale and the continuous increase of its comprehensive economic strength. According to data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the GDP of the BRICS countries calculated according to market-based exchange rates was $2.72 trillion in 2000, and it rose to $16.48 trillion by 2015 – 6.1 times that of 2000 – and the share of the BRICS countries correspondingly rose from 8.2 per cent to 22.5 per cent of global GDP aggregate. During the same period, the GDP of the BRICS based on the purchasing power parity (PPP) calculation increased from 18.7 per cent of global total to 30.8 per cent (see Table 1.1).

Table 1.1 Changed economic aggregates of the BRICS

Year	GDP calculated on market-based exchange rates		GDP based on PPP
	Scale ($100 million)	Percentage of global total (%)	Scale ($100 million)	Percentage of global total (%)
2000	27229	8.2	91709	18.7
2005	50350	10.7	145641	21.8
2010	117676	18.0	238925	27.1
2015	164838	22.5	349911	30.8

Sources: IMF, WEO, April 2016.

Nevertheless, it should also be noted that the economic growth of the BRICS has generally slowed down, which will be a drag on the robust driving force of mutual cooperation among the BRICS countries. IMF data indicate that the GDP growth rate of the BRICS was approximately 5 per cent in 2014, much slower than the over 11 per cent in 2007.² Alongside the general economic deceleration, the BRICS countries have also witnessed differentiated economic growth rates. According to the IMF data, India, China and South Africa registered economic growth of 7.3 per cent, 6.9 per cent and 1.3 per cent respectively in 2015, while the economic growth rate in Russia and Brazil was -3.8 per cent and -3.7 per cent.³ Russia’s considerable economic slide was to a large extent linked to the economic sanctions it suffered from the West, but its differentiated economic growth rate from other BRICS countries will undoubtedly aggravate the divergent policy targets of the BRICS as a whole, and add difficulties to economic policy coordination among the BRICS countries. Against this backdrop, some believe the “original colour” of the BRICS has faded, and the pessimistic outlook, such as comparing the BRICS to a combination of “gold” and “bricks”, has gradually become popular.

1.2 New breakthroughs achieved in pragmatic cooperation in spite of growing challenges

As a group, the BRICS has developed into a multi-layered cooperative mechanism that comprises summit meetings and other levels of meetings in various fields, with ever-deepening cooperation among member states. A series of cooperation outcomes achieved at the summit meetings has facilitated more pragmatic cooperation among the BRICS countries (see Table 1.2). A review of the main results of the BRICS summit meetings will find that the cooperation of the BRICS has increasingly attached importance to policies’ planning and their implementation. Since the fourth summit meeting in 2012, the five BRICS countries have begun formulating corresponding action plans while issuing joint declarations, which has not only pointed to the direction for next-stage cooperation, but also offered bases for evaluation of cooperation effects. It should be noted that two years after the leaders of the BRICS countries decided in 2013 to set up the BRICS new development bank and emergency reserve mechanism, this bank was formally opened (in July 2015) and the emergency reserve arrangement was also formally put into effect, meaning the cooperation of the BRICS begins to march towards the stage of materialization.

Table 1.2 Main cooperation fruits of the BRICS summit meetings

No.	Time	Venue	Main fruits
1st meeting	June 2009	Yekaterinburg	Issuing a joint statement and ratifying a joint statement on global food security.
2nd meeting	April 2010	Brasilia	Issuing a joint statement on the second formal meeting of BRICS leaders, and holding an entrepreneurs’ forum, a forum of banks and cooperatives and a meeting of think tanks.
3rd meeting	September 2011	Sanya	Publishing the Sanya Declaration and signing a framework agreement on financial cooperation among the banks of the BRICS countries.
4th meeting	April 2012	New Delhi	Issuing the Delhi Declaration and its Action Plan, signing a general accord on multilateral local-currency credit authorization under the cooperative mechanism of the BRICS banks and an agreement on multilateral letter of credit protection and conversion services, and discussing the possibility of setting up a new development bank.
5th meeting	March 2013	Durban	Issuing the Durban Declaration and its Action Plan, publishing a cooperative framework on trade and investment of the BRICS countries, setting up a business council and a think tank council of BRICS countries, and deciding to set up the BRICS new development bank and an emergency reserve mechanism.
6th meeting	July 2014	Fortaleza	Issuing the Fortaleza Declaration and its Action Plan, signing the agreements on the establishment of the BRICS new development bank and emergency reserve and signing an accord on bank cooperation among the BRICS countries, and a memorandum of understanding on technical cooperation among export credit and insurance agencies of the BRICS countries.
7th meeting	July 2015	Ufa	Issuing the Ufa Declaration, formulating an economic partnership of the BRICS countries, passing an e-commerce cooperation framework, signing an inter-central bank accord on the BRICS emergency reserve arrangement, and holding the first council meeting of the newly established BRICS new development bank.
8th meeting	October 2016	Goa	Issuing the Goa Declaration, signing of the Regulations on Customs Cooperation Committee of the BRICS, signing of the MoU for Establishment of the BRICS Agricultural Research Platform, endorsing the Goa Action Plan
9th meeting	September 2017	Xiamen	Issuing the Xiamen Declaration, endorsing BRICS Action Agenda on Economic and Trade Cooperation, BRICS Action Plan for Innovation Cooperation (2017–2020), Action Plan 2017–2020 for Agricultural Cooperation of BRICS Countries, and Action Plan for the Implementation of the Agreement between the Governments of the BRICS States on Cooperation in the Field of Culture (2017–2021)

Source: Based on the website of China’s Foreign Ministry.

Undeniably, just like the slow progress that many international negotiating and cooperative mechanisms suffer in their late stages (although remarkable progress has been achieved in their early stages), the BRICS is expected to face increasing difficulties in its efforts to make major breakthroughs in some new areas, as time goes by and previous space for cooperation is already filled. The BRICS countries face a wide variety of cooperation areas, and in the areas where they share common interests and concerns and where consensuses could be easily reached, remarkable progress has been made. However, in those areas where only slow progress has been achieved, they usually face relatively large disputes or issues that are difficult to overcome. At the same time, some unfavourable factors in the external world are disturbing the process of the BRICS’s development and cooperation – including obstruction from some vested interest countries and groups of countries, which makes it difficult for the BRICS to play its due role in global governance. For instance, the failed implementation of the measures for IMF and World Bank reforms has to a large extent restricted the voice of the BRICS in international affairs. The exclusion of the BRICS countries from such large-scale economic and trade agreements as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), dominated by developed econ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 The BRICS studies: Academic approach and frontier issues
• 2 Non-neutrality of international regimes and the BRICS cooperation
• 3 Theoretical explanations for the origin of BRICS cooperation
• 4 BRICS cooperation in the game of countries
• 5 International structure and the BRICS cooperation
• 6 Practice theory and China’s participation in BRICS cooperation
• 7 The BRICS countries and global economic governance
• 8 The BRICS countries and the global financial governance
• 9 Construction of free trade zones in the BRICS countries
• 10 The BRICS countries and new international direct investment rules
• 11 The BRICS countries and international energy cooperation
• 12 The BRICS countries and international cooperation on climate change
• 13 The BRICS countries and global cyberspace governance
• 14 The BRICS countries and the construction of New Development Bank
• 15 Cooperation among the BRICS countries for developing emerging industries
• References
• Index