2 days ago
- Business
- New Straits Times
BRICS defies Western scepticism, charts reformist path
As BRICS (and now BRICS+) matures into a serious platform for South-South cooperation, Western outlets have doubled down on trivialising its substance to neutralise its appeal.
The "division and dysfunction" refrain was predictably trotted out in commentaries about the recent 17th BRICS summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Chinese President Xi Jinping's absence, his first since taking office in 2012, was swiftly weaponised. The Guardian called BRICS "unbalanced". CNBC suggested that it lacked cohesion. Al Jazeera framed it as "dispersion".
Yet few noted that Premier Li Qiang, China's second-in-command, attended in Xi's place (not a foreign minister, but China's top economic policymaker).
Far from symbolic, this signalled sustained high-level commitment. Also overlooked: Indonesia joined BRICS as a full member.
Not only is it a major Southeast Asian economy, it is also a G20 member. Hardly a lightweight.
This undercuts the narrative of weakening cohesion but raises uncomfortable questions about the cohesion of the West's own institutions.
Missing, too, is the fact that BRICS operates by consensus, not coercion. Meanwhile, the economic scaremongering felt equally familiar.
United States President Donald Trump's revived tariff threats were deployed to overshadow the BRICS summit, suggesting peril for any country engaging seriously with the bloc. The bloc is provoking the global North, we are told.
Never mind that many BRICS members maintain close ties with the West, and that the group's own declarations call for reform within global institutions, not withdrawal from them.
Nevertheless, the fundamental truth missed entirely is that BRICS economies are productive economies. They manufacture semiconductors, refine oil, export food and mine rare earths. Their growth is grounded in material reality.
By contrast, much of the West's economic weight rests on inflated valuations and speculative finance. A tech stock may be worth billions one week and could collapse the next.
The same distortive lens is applied to BRICS declarations. Dismissed as vague or aspirational, these statements are rarely read in full.
The 2025 declaration proposed the incubation of a multilateral guarantee mechanism and advanced work on digital settlement interoperability. These are not rhetorical flourishes; they are structural shifts.
Even Brazil's sustainability initiative was framed as "vague" and dependent on Northern financing. The implication is clear: the Global South cannot innovate without strings and certainly not without permission.
This logic reaches its peak by casting the Global South as perpetually poor, passive or behind. The fact that the BRICS summit hosted over 10 partner countries, including Malaysia, Nigeria and Vietnam, each with distinct development strategies and aspirations, is ignored. That these countries are asserting plural models of cooperation is seen not as maturity, but as risk.
Rather than meet this shift with clarity, Western commentary doubles down on old tropes, such as the claim that BRICS is anti-Western.
It simply does not hold. The group's foundational ethos is reformist, not revisionist.
It seeks a more equitable order — one where sovereignty is respected, trade is not weaponised and conditionalities do not dictate policy.
It is not a rival bloc, but a parallel platform complementary to global efforts and anchored in international law.
This accusation of politicisation is deeply ironic. BRICS is not held together by ideology or enforced alignment. Its members have different political systems, regional interests and diplomatic postures but have chosen to cooperate. That is not political bloc behaviour but rather pragmatic pluralism.
Malaysia's participation in the summit itself offers a striking counterpoint to the Western narrative.
Notably, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim was the only foreign leader invited to deliver a keynote at the BRICS Business Forum.
More than symbolic, his presence sparked a cascade of bilateral engagements — many requested by other nations.
Anwar positioned Malaysia as a bridge between East and West, showcasing the bloc's appeal as a platform for pragmatic diplomacy, not polarised alignment.
In truth, BRICS is doing what the West once claimed to champion: empowering developing nations to co-shape the rules of global engagement.
Its institutional growth is real, from think tank networks to cross-border infrastructure platforms.
Its financial architecture is maturing. The West's critique of BRICS says less about BRICS itself, and more about its own anxiety over declining influence.
The writer is the founder of think tank EMIR Research
