The French press is reporting on Monday (21) expectations and analysis of the 15th BRICS Summit, which starts tomorrow in Johannesburg. The information site Médiapart says that rarely has a meeting between the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa been followed so closely.
RFI
“Under the impetus of China, the club [of emerging economies] is seeking to expand its influence in order to assert its power vis-à-vis the West,” says Médiapart, noting that the United States and the European Union fear the formation of a political alliance capable of turning the tables on the current world order.
“Without expressing it openly, Western leaders fear that this summit will widen the rift that emerged during the vote on the war in Ukraine in March 2022, when forty countries – not the least of them – chose to abstain or vote against the [UN] resolution condemning the Russian invasion,” recalls Médiapart.
According to the French outlet, the diplomatic and economic interests of this summit go beyond the issue of development in Africa, as the title of the meeting succinctly suggests. “Even if the African continent seems to be the new battleground between the established powers and the rising powers, the objective goes far beyond that: it is to affirm the new balance of political and economic power that has developed in recent years, to challenge a world order built by and for the West,” says Médiapart. The site questions whether “we are witnessing the creation of a new geopolitical and economic bloc, camp against camp, as in the Cold War, as some threaten”.
Currency dependency
The BFMTV channel discusses one of the issues on the economic agenda: the reduction in dependence on the dollar and the euro desired by the BRICS. According to one of the broadcaster’s analysts, China wants to encourage the use of local currencies in trade between the countries in the group, but the creation of a common currency for trade between the emerging economies is still a distant, medium or long-term goal, according to several experts.
A Dutch bank recently published a report showing that a Brics currency project backed by the yuan, the Chinese currency, and Panda bonds, as bonds issued domestically in China are called, is technically impossible due to the low volume of issues at the moment. Another relevant issue is that India would have no interest in getting rid of its dollar operations in order to strengthen the Chinese currency. For these and other reasons, experts believe that the BRICS will seek to deepen exchanges in local currencies.
Other factors that do not currently offer the BRICS more ambitious financial prospects are the slowdown in growth in China and the isolation of Russia caused by the invasion of Ukraine, the French press believes.