BRICS cooperation: What makes China the group leader?

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China, the current BRICS chair and the member with the fastest growth, is recognized by many as the group’s leader that glues everyone together and pushes cooperation forward.

China has an irreplaceable role in shaping the organization’s agenda in the next decade, as the country’s economy is the biggest, said Professor Zheng Yongnian, director of the East Asian Institute at National University of Singapore. China is actually twice the size of all the other four combined.

Other than that, China also leads by both ideas and actions when it comes to cooperation between countries.

“By ideas, China stresses its equal partnership – win-win – that’s important. By actions... China has organized up to 84 events, 22 of which are at ministerial level, in terms of coordination, now all leading to this summit,” said Zhang Weiwei, director of China Institute, Fudan University.

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi says that the BRICS is not a “closed club,” meaning that the group should welcome more developing countries to get on board. /VCG Photo

BRICS – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – are five of the strongest emerging economies, though some of them are slowing down pace. They represent roughly a quarter of the world’s GDP and trade between them takes up 16 percent of the world’s total volume.

Such a large ship may sail fast but is also hard to steer.

China has brought up a “BRICS Plus” concept, which is to bring more members into the group to make it stronger. And that was put on hold for a lack of response.

The idea of China being the leader might not sound completely convincing to many, but the country is on its way.

BRICS countries have signed an agreement to start an E-commerce training course in China, because China has the leading technologies and the market keeps on making sales wonders. The online sales volume of 18.2 billion US dollars on last year’s Double 11 (Single's Day) online shopping day surpassed that of India for the whole year.

VCG Photo

China themed last year’s G20 summit in Hangzhou as "Breaking a new path for growth," which China itself has been practicing over the past few years and made world leading achievements.

“We have the world’s largest high speed train network, it’s changing people’s mindset about space and time. The application, Wechat, enables people to do almost everything with their cellphone. And China’s mobile payment transaction is even larger than Japan’s GDP,” said Zhang.