- Thursday, February 27, 2025
China is reportedly eyeing expansion of the BRICS group of emerging markets to facilitate its political clout and counter the US, sources said.
By: Shubham Ghosh
INDIA and Brazil have pushed back against China’s bid to expand the BRICS group of emerging markets to facilitate its political clout and counter the US, Bloomberg reported citing informed sources.
The two countries have objected in preparatory talks for a summit in Johannesburg in South Africa in August where the members of the grouping (acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) are set to discuss potentially expanding the platform to include countries such as Indonesia and Saudi Arabia.
According to the sources that requested for anonymity, Beijing has repeatedly sought the grouping’s expansion during those meetings.
Many other nations are also targeting a membership of the grouping, leaving the western nations concerned that the BRICS is emerging as a counterweight to the US and European Union.
Earlier this month, Algeria has applied for a membership of the BRICS and requested to become a shareholder member of the BRICS Bank with $1.5 billion, Algiers’s Ennahar TV quoted Algerian president Abdelmadjid Tebboune as saying, Reuters reported.
It also said that Tebboune remarked after his recent visit to China that Algiers had sought to join the BRICS to open new economic possibilities. The North African nation is rich in oil and gas resources and planning to diversify its economy.
According to the Bloomberg report, India wants strict rules on how and when other countries could move closer to the BRICS, without it formally expanding. Any decision will need consensus among the members who will meet in the fourth week of August.
New Delhi and Brasilia want to use the upcoming summit in South Africa to raise the issue of bringing in additional nations with observer status, according to the sources. The host nation is in favour of discussing various options to accommodate this idea but not necessarily against expansion of the grouping, two of the sources added.
Russia doesn’t have a firm position on BRICS’s expansion, Fyodor Lukyanov, head of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, which advises the Kremlin, said, as per Bloomberg.
Speaking to Bloomberg, China’s foreign ministry said, “The BRICS leaders meeting last year authorized the expansion of membership, adding more members to BRICS is the political consensus of the five BRICS countries.”
The summit, which comes at a time when relations between the US and China are sour and South Africa fretted over the attendance of Russian president Vladimir Putin who will take part virtually so the host nation doesn’t have to execute an International Criminal Court arrest warrant against him, aims to showcase BRICS’s goals to establish itself as a strong political and economic force.
