The Brics bloc of developing nations likes to boast that it represents nearly half the world\u2019s population, but its annual summit this weekend in Brazil will highlight a major drawback of its fast expansion: the difficulty of reaching agreement.<\/p>\n
The bloc \u2014 comprised until 2023 of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa \u2014 has more than doubled in size, as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran and others took its membership from five countries to 11. Some new members have injected fresh divisions into the Brics, which was already struggling for coherence and split between democracies and autocracies.<\/p>\n
Around half the group\u2019s leaders plan to skip the Rio de Janeiro summit, including two of the most prominent: Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russia\u2019s Vladimir Putin. <\/p>\n
While Putin is busy with the invasion of Ukraine, China has given no explanation for Xi\u2019s absence, throwing a question mark over the event and its ability to make meaningful agreements.\u00a0His number two, Premier Li Qiang, is set to attend in his stead. <\/p>\n
Heightened Middle East tensions mean the leaders of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Iran are not expected to come.<\/p>\n The Brics acronym was coined by Lord Jim O\u2019Neill, then chief economist at Goldman Sachs, in a 2001 paper<\/a> about the power of the world\u2019s emerging economies. Brazil, Russia, India and China later moved to create a forum for co-operation, leading to a summit in 2009. South Africa joined in 2011.<\/p>\n Concerns over the bloc\u2019s unwieldy new membership surfaced at a Brics foreign ministers meeting in April. Attendees failed to agree a statement, as tensions flared over who should hold a putative future African UN security council seat. <\/p>\n The first five Brics had previously edged towards suggesting it should go to South Africa. But new members Ethiopia and Egypt disliked that idea.<\/p>\n \u201cYou import tensions into Brics by adding these new members,\u201d said Oliver Stuenkel, an associate professor at the School of International Relations at the Funda\u00e7\u00e3o Get\u00falio Vargas think-tank in S\u00e3o Paulo. <\/p>\n Some Brics nations, meanwhile, are pursuing other foreign policy paths. India is bolstering defence and trade ties with western democracies. It has recently agreed trade pacts with the UK and Australia, and is in talks with the EU and the US, the latter in an attempt to fend off President Donald Trump\u2019s threat of a 26 per cent tariff on Indian goods.<\/p>\n India and the US have also stepped up their ties on defence, technology and science in recent years as an anti-China bulwark.\u00a0 <\/p>\n \u201cFor India, Brics is the plan B when there are questions about the reliability of partners elsewhere,\u201d said Constantino Xavier, a senior fellow at the Centre for Social and Economic Progress, a think-tank in New Delhi. \u201cThe Chinese and particularly the Russians are taking the Brics over, and India knows it has lost influence.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Host nation Brazil is hoping to steer the gathering towards less controversial areas. These include initiatives on infectious diseases, discussions on artificial intelligence and \u2014 with one eye on Brazil\u2019s hosting of the annual UN climate summit in November \u2014 funding for green energy.<\/p>\n Mindful of the need to avoid provoking an unpredictable US president, diplomats say the Brics statements are likely to skirt controversial topics that could trigger Washington\u2019s ire. A recent statement by the bloc expressed \u201cgrave concern over the military strikes\u201d against Iran, but avoided mentioning the US or Israel.<\/p>\n Before the weekend a sticking point in negotiations over the leaders\u2019 statement was the conflict between Iran and Israel, with Tehran pushing for a harder position, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Other impasses in the talks related to reform of the UN Security Council and the issue of Palestine, though there was optimism that a consensus would be reached, they added.<\/p>\n At a meeting of the New Development Bank, a multilateral lender founded by the Brics, Brazilian president Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva raised the topic of a \u201cnew trade currency\u201d. President Trump has warned the group\u2019s members of steep tariffs if they create an alternative to the US dollar.<\/p>\n Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is due to attend the Rio summit but Xi\u2019s absence will hang over the meeting. Keen to downplay the impact, Brazilian diplomats point out that Xi attended Brazil\u2019s G20 summit in Rio less than eight months ago and that Lula met him in Beijing only in May. <\/p>\n But in Beijing, Xi\u2019s non-attendance has sparked speculation over whether his health is up to the long trip or whether he has other undisclosed commitments.\u00a0<\/p>\n Filling the room instead will be 10 new Brics \u201cpartner nations\u201d, a category created last year in part to allay Indian and Brazilian concerns about accepting\u00a0new members too quickly. They include Belarus, Cuba and Bolivia, as well as Asean nations Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia.<\/p>\n For China, whose struggling economy is heavily dependent on exports for growth, the main goal will be to win support for the rules-based multilateral trading system in the face of growing US protectionism.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIf the Brics can produce some sort of co-ordinated economic response or statement that would be a very real achievement,\u201d said Zhu Feng, professor of international relations at Nanjing University.<\/p>\n But another Chinese scholar, who did not wish to be named discussing sensitive issues for the Chinese leadership, said the increasingly fractured nature of the Brics made its ability to produce such outcomes less and less likely.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cRather than working together to beat America,\u201d he said, the Brics members had all \u201caccepted US unilateralism\u201d and were engaged in one-to-one talks with Washington, in some cases, such as Vietnam, at China\u2019s expense.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
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