We in India need to evaluate BRICS 2017 in its two aspects. One is the deliberations among the heads of the state who had come together and brought out a joint resolution voicing their concerns on various situations confronting the contemporary world society. The second aspect of the event is the side line meeting between Prime Minister Modi and President Xi of China. Both events are of importance though of course bilateral meeting between Modi and President Xi has special significance in the light of 73 – day Dokalam standoff between the security forces of the two countries. Of course steady diplomacy and astute handling of the situation by New Delhi finally saw the clouds over Dokalam disappear. It has also to be reminded that Beijing could not afford to make the 9th BRICS meet a success if Dokalam still continued and Modi would not be among the participants in the crucial meet.
The 9th BRICS summit in Xiamen, China is not a routine meeting because it comes at a time when the bloc is entering a new stage of intensive development. Moreover, it was the place for China to demonstrate its new role in international relations and the global economy. The summit has come at a time of increased political tensions in different areas, both close to the venue itself – that is, the Korean peninsula – and faraway Syria and the Middle East.
At the same time, US policy seems to be in disarray and there is no clear understanding of how US President Donald Trump’s inward looking economic policy would be coordinated with the aggressive interference in other countries, which still remains the trademark of his administration’s activities despite his intention to withdraw from many regions.
9th BRICS, therefore, had to demonstrate its role as an alternative source of power, derived from the combination of global rising powers that can contribute to the stability of the world order and introduce new rules of behaviour, and new rules of cooperation on an international scale. This approach became catalyst to China along with other member countries naming known terrorist organizations in the South Asian and Central Asian region as threat to international peace, something which India has been stressing upon on international forums.
It was during a BRICS High Representatives meeting in China when Chinese and Indian officials found compromise to the Doklam territorial issue. For most of this summer, Indian and Chinese troops were engaged in a tense military standoff in the Doklam area on the Sikkim sector of the India-China border. Their compromise to disengage on August 28 was implemented just in time so as to not aggravate the BRICS summit. BRICS is also united on issues like the Korean peninsula and the need for a diplomatic solution to this problem, and on the fight against terrorism as well as other hot issues of today’s world.
BRICS is in fact presenting a clear-cut strategy of creating a just world order which facilitates an increasing role for developing nations, including the bloc. In fact, BRICS is becoming the meeting place for developing countries and the platform for South-South cooperation.
The “BRICS-plus” concept introduced by China (to invite five other nations to attend the Summit) is the innovation that brings to the BRICS process other regional powers on a permanent basis, and not on a case-by-case basis which it was before. We hope that it is not a onetime event and in the future a sort of “BRICS friends club” will emerge that will help these countries to cooperate with BRICS on various economic and political bases.
BRICS is particularly interested in the financial architecture of the world, and the Xiamen Summit will has helped develop the new approaches to increasing the influential role of BRICS and other developing countries in structures like the IMF and World Bank. A demonstration of this financial vigour is nowhere more evident than in the increasing activity of the New Development Bank. The Bank has already disbursed $1.5 billion in the first seven credit lines for all BRICS countries and now is planning to disburse another $2.5 to 3 billion this year for projects as different as Russian judicial system information and Chinese ecological projects.
This is a very logical sphere of BRICS’s interest because the five nations comprise the greatest number of internet users in the world and access should not be a national regulated enterprise but the sphere of necessity for all mankind.
China’s hosting of the summit, in line with the Beijing leadership’s commitment to increase multilateralism and globalization, will help BRICS move further intensively and extensively by pushing from the project inception stage to discussions, from discussions to signing the agreements and the real “on the ground” implementation.
That will help consolidate BRICS’s role as a vital player in global governance.
Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping bilateral meet on the sidelines of BRICS Summit in Xiamen – their first since the end of a military standoff in high Himalayas, one thing became immediately clear. Doka La may have unintentionally triggered a positive change in the bilateral equation and it is possible that the differences, which threatened to descend into a bitter dispute and even a conflict, might end up becoming an opportunity. However, it does not mean that established differences and dissimilar between the two neighbours have to be brushed under carpet. India’s position as a status-quoist, liberal democracy makes it vulnerable before a revisionist superpower such as China which has shown repeated disregard for sovereign boundaries or international rules-based order as it seeks to throw its neo-colonial weight driven by a deep, historical resentment.
It was interesting to note, therefore, as Modi-Xi bilateral came to an end in Xiamtn both sides showed a concerted effort to move beyond Dokalam and seek new modus vivendi through a “forward-looking” dialogue. The phrase “forward looking”, which foreign secretary S Jaishankar repeatedly stressed on during his brief media interaction, deserves to be given a serious thought. It suggests that during the bilateral (which went on for an hour of which at least half was spent on discussing post-Doka La complications) Modi and Xi were keen to avoid appearing resentful over the conflict and were more intent in understanding the ramifications of the issue, and discuss ways to avoid such an eventuality in the future. It is possible that discussions on fresh dispute mechanisms and confidence-building measures have taken place.
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