BRICS and its “promise” enjoys significant attention today for the extent to which discourse on the global financial architecture and on changes in the global order has captured the imagination.
Chinese President Xi Jinping is said to have exclaimed that “what the world is seeing today has not been witnessed in the last 100 years”. Of course, the BRICS bloc has expanded its agenda since 2009 to include more than 70 co-operation mechanisms. However, this year’s BRICS summit brings into sharp focus two much- anticipated issues: BRICS expansion and a payment system.
“We will widen the circle of friends of the BRICS and turn it into the most influential platform for South-South co-operation in the world,” declared Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister.
The first, perhaps more symbolic of a changing “global political
