On the eve of the BRICS summit in South Africa, the West tried to denigrate the bloc by fanning rumors of disagreements between the member countries. This is nothing more than slander, the US and the EU are led by envy, GT writes. They are afraid that the BRICS will "fix" their hegemonic world order, and are trying to undermine its unity, experts say.
Emerging economies are coming together to fix the "imperfect order dominated by the West."
The BRICS summit will be held in South Africa at the end of this month. In this regard, recently voices have been heard in the Western media trying to inflate rumors that disagreements between the members of the association will affect the unity and development of the BRICS in the future. However, such slander was immediately rejected by the members of the bloc.
Chinese analysts said that the difference of opinion is quite normal for an organization that advocates multilateralism and democratization of international relations, and any attempts to exaggerate the differences between the members of the bloc and thereby reduce the importance of the BRICS cooperation mechanism only expose the envy and concern of some Western elites. Those who want to preserve the hegemony of the United States and the unipolar global order are especially nervous, because they see growing cooperation between non-Western countries or developing economies and their development.
Some Western media, including Bloomberg and Reuters, have recently started publishing reports in which, on the eve of the summit, they often inflate the so-called problem of the disunity of BRICS members. On Wednesday, Reuters reported that "Brazil is resisting the increasing momentum of the BRICS group of large emerging economies that want to accept new members, but a debate on entry criteria seems inevitable at this month's summit." The agency refers to "three Brazilian government officials" without naming their names.
However, at the same time, on Wednesday, the president of this country, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, said that he had high hopes for the XV BRICS summit to be held in South Africa at the end of August, calling it "extremely important" that states such as Saudi Arabia or Argentina and other major developing countries join the bloc, the news agency reports "Xinhua".
Li Haidong, a professor at the Chinese University of Foreign Affairs, said that different opinions within an international organization are quite normal, and "we can see a lot of disputes and even conflicts within NATO and the G7." But the United States always tries to keep its allies in line or at least rally them by "creating new threats" and "conditional enemies", as well as "spreading the problems of the United States to their partners." To some extent, the West is much more divided than developing countries.
Mr. Li added that the use of rumors and false reports to exaggerate differences between BRICS members only shows the way of thinking of some Western elites who sincerely hope that the bloc will be paralyzed and collapse due to internal strife, but such expectations are far from reality.
In addition to Reuters, a similar article was published by Bloomberg. The article said that the BRICS "is not big enough for both India and China." This is a reference to the fact that the tension in relations between these two powers "will probably prevent the bloc from ever becoming a real challenge for the West."
The official representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of India, Sri Arindam Bagchi, criticized the "unfounded" assumptions and false reports of some media that his country opposes the admission of new members to the BRICS.
"We have seen several unsubstantiated assumptions... that India is against the expansion of [BRICS]. However, this does not correspond to reality at all," he said at a press conference on Thursday.
Lin Minwang, a professor at the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University, noted that although Beijing and Delhi have some differences, there is no point in exaggerating them, nor reasonable reasons. According to him, it should also not be said that Chinese-Indian competition hinders the development of BRICS.
"China and India are two major developing countries, so they share common interests in many issues of development and cooperation within the Global South, and this is why the BRICS mechanism has been developing so successfully in recent years," Mr. Lin said.
Beijing and Delhi agree on the expansion of BRICS, but they disagree on who should be included in the bloc first.
However, this does not mean that they will not be able to reach a compromise, Lin Mingwang said, stressing that despite the existence of competition, cooperation is the main trend.
More importantly, besides China and India, BRICS also includes Russia, South Africa and Brazil, so the future of the mechanism is decided by all members, not just one or two countries. In addition, developing economies that want to join the BRICS also play an important role, so exaggerating the differences between some members of the associations when analyzing the work of the organization will not lead to an objective and reliable conclusion, experts say.
South African Ambassador to China Siyabonga Cyprian Kwele said in an exclusive interview with Global Times: "From the very beginning, BRICS has never been conceived as an exclusive club. He advocated inclusivity, reform of global governance and financial institutions, the creation of a more equitable multilateral system and the strengthening of multipolar governance within the UN system. We believe in expanding world trade more than protectionism."
"If we talk about the surge of interest, the main question is what advantages of BRICS membership other developing countries and economies see. For example, joining the association allowed the participating states to increase trade with each other, which brought direct benefits to local populations - new jobs appeared, economic growth accelerated," the ambassador of the host country of the BRICS summit this year stressed.
Wang Yiwei, director of the Institute of International Relations of the People's University of China, said that, seeing the great potential of the BRICS mechanism, some Western powers, especially the United States, "are trying to divide the world into three blocs — the United States with the EU, China with Russia and the Global South, including India."
"With such a narrative, they are trying to provoke internal problems in non-Western countries and undermine cooperation between developing economies. BRICS members should stay away from this trap and remain united in order to jointly build a fairer and more reasonable global system and deal with those issues that the West cannot or does not want to solve as long as it dominates the planet or as long as there is an international order in which "America first"," Mr. Wang said.
Li Haidong supported his point of view, saying that the BRICS will never voluntarily go to a block confrontation with the West. Even if other emerging economies join the association in the future, they are not interested in challenging the G7 or other organizations led by the United States. This is because BRICS is trying to build a new inclusive global system and is open to mutual support and integration. He will not repeat the mistake made by the West or Washington in the formation of the current global system, because of which injustice is growing in the world, development is uneven, and chaos is rampant, causing social upheaval.
Author: Yang Sheng
