The BRICS bloc is riven with tensions
China’s plan to expand the club reveals the contradictions at its core
LIKE THE iPod and MySpace, the BRICS bloc is a product of the benign optimism of the 2000s. In 2001 Goldman Sachs coined the acronym BRIC in a paper about the economic potential of Brazil, Russia, India and China. The quartet ran with the idea, holding its first summit in 2009. A year later South Africa was invited to join. Some analysts feared the BRICS might soon start to rival the G7, but the grouping quickly lost momentum. The non-Asian BRICS economies stagnated in the 2010s. At summits the bloc would issue garbled communiqués about the perfidious West—which the perfidious West would promptly ignore. The BRICS looked dead.
Explore more
This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline “Is a bigger party a better one?”
International August 19th 2023
From the August 19th 2023 edition
Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents
Explore the editionDiscover more
“Tariffers” v “traders”: the new contest for Donald Trump’s ear
Eye-witnesses to the drama of the first Trump presidency brace for the sequel
The world is losing the fight against international gangs
Globalisation and technological progress are leading to a boom in organised crime
Half a loaf, at best, from the climate talks
This year’s negotiations made very modest progress
Is your master’s degree useless?
New data show a shockingly high proportion of courses are a waste of money
The perils of appeasing a warlike Russia
Finland’s cold-war past offers urgent lessons for Ukraine’s future
The danger zone between two presidents
The world’s bad actors will relish any power vacuum
