China, India form arch-pillars of BRICS
By Dattesh D. Parulekar |
China Daily Asia |
Updated: 2018-07-30 16:02
As the capstone grouping of rising powers and vanguard emerging economies, the BRICS leaders have convened again, a decade since its inception.
BRICS (the grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) has achieved meaningful success over the decade of its summit-level inception.
This success is encapsulated in the marquee enshrining of the New Development Bank, which curates new methodologies and parameters, underwriting project funding, fructified within a winnowed timeframe; the setting-up of a Contingent Reserve Arrangement to tide over and tend to liquidity issues among members; and the setting up of academic and business councils that point toward decentralizing stakeholder exchanges.
Yet, the crucible of its best intentions and measure of its accomplishment shall be premised on its ability to induce and forge change in patterns of global governance processes, without necessarily working to supplant the current order or upending its moorings.
China, through its decisive mercantilist wherewithal, harvests the opportune space to become the unabashed champion for globalization, amid the US’ recant from liberal institutions and its protectionist pushback.
India, for its part, leverages BRICS for all its voluble worth, but sees a strong working relationship with the West as critical to its autonomous national development and regional and global aspirations.
BRICS has achieved meaningful success over the decade of its summit-level inception
The reality is that BRICS must embrace pragmatic cooperation around issues pertaining to poverty alleviation through financial inclusion and empowerment, skill development and innovation, renewable energy as the linchpin of sustainable development, and regional and subregional economic cooperation.
This might mean new cooperation between Beijing and New Delhi on each other’s initiatives, such as the International Solar Alliance (ISA), which bears an Indian imprint, and the China-chaperoned Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).
A constructive starting point bears through in the form of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which both sides showcase as a salutary example of a practical and tangible Sino-Indian approach to infrastructural financing.
China and India as the arch-pillars of BRICS are cogently growing economies. China brings incontrovertible preponderance to the fore, through the full range of its economic and financial heft, industrial and infrastructural clout, and the robust expression of national power.
India, on the other hand, through the intangibility of its inveterate democracy, and unique, soft-wiring traditions at inclusive development diplomacy, underpins its glacial economic emergence and draws an unmistakable incandescence to the high table.
This duality beholds before the grouping the opportunity and challenge to dovetail these distinct approaches, which need not necessarily be construed as juxtaposed, for optimizing strategic outcomes.
Yet, for BRICS to succeed, it should also craft its prospective web of institutional design that must proffer the scope and latitude to circumvent institutional entrapment in rigmaroles and red tape.
It needs a good measure of top-down mechanism to effect change, even as it encourages a bottom-up approach to make such change representative. It needs substantive internal deliberation to forge cohesion and consolidation across thought and action, even as it acquires the inherent prominence, leveraged by its collective geographical span and composite economic metrics, to articulate and canvass for democratized, multilateralized change.
For this, China is seen as the new robust regional and global institutional sculptor, blended among the others by an incandescent India which visualizes itself, with burgeoning clout, as an effective bridge between BRICS and the West. Thus they will be able to realize the partaking goals of a ‘community of common security and shared prosperity’, undergirded by a hard footprint but also permeating values rooted in collegiality, consensus and constructive collaboration.
The author is assistant professor of International Affairs and Area Studies at the Department of International Relations, Goa University, Goa, India. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of China Watch.
As the capstone grouping of rising powers and vanguard emerging economies, the BRICS leaders have convened again, a decade since its inception.
BRICS (the grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) has achieved meaningful success over the decade of its summit-level inception.
This success is encapsulated in the marquee enshrining of the New Development Bank, which curates new methodologies and parameters, underwriting project funding, fructified within a winnowed timeframe; the setting-up of a Contingent Reserve Arrangement to tide over and tend to liquidity issues among members; and the setting up of academic and business councils that point toward decentralizing stakeholder exchanges.
Yet, the crucible of its best intentions and measure of its accomplishment shall be premised on its ability to induce and forge change in patterns of global governance processes, without necessarily working to supplant the current order or upending its moorings.
China, through its decisive mercantilist wherewithal, harvests the opportune space to become the unabashed champion for globalization, amid the US’ recant from liberal institutions and its protectionist pushback.
India, for its part, leverages BRICS for all its voluble worth, but sees a strong working relationship with the West as critical to its autonomous national development and regional and global aspirations.
BRICS has achieved meaningful success over the decade of its summit-level inception
The reality is that BRICS must embrace pragmatic cooperation around issues pertaining to poverty alleviation through financial inclusion and empowerment, skill development and innovation, renewable energy as the linchpin of sustainable development, and regional and subregional economic cooperation.
This might mean new cooperation between Beijing and New Delhi on each other’s initiatives, such as the International Solar Alliance (ISA), which bears an Indian imprint, and the China-chaperoned Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).
A constructive starting point bears through in the form of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which both sides showcase as a salutary example of a practical and tangible Sino-Indian approach to infrastructural financing.
China and India as the arch-pillars of BRICS are cogently growing economies. China brings incontrovertible preponderance to the fore, through the full range of its economic and financial heft, industrial and infrastructural clout, and the robust expression of national power.
India, on the other hand, through the intangibility of its inveterate democracy, and unique, soft-wiring traditions at inclusive development diplomacy, underpins its glacial economic emergence and draws an unmistakable incandescence to the high table.
This duality beholds before the grouping the opportunity and challenge to dovetail these distinct approaches, which need not necessarily be construed as juxtaposed, for optimizing strategic outcomes.
Yet, for BRICS to succeed, it should also craft its prospective web of institutional design that must proffer the scope and latitude to circumvent institutional entrapment in rigmaroles and red tape.
It needs a good measure of top-down mechanism to effect change, even as it encourages a bottom-up approach to make such change representative. It needs substantive internal deliberation to forge cohesion and consolidation across thought and action, even as it acquires the inherent prominence, leveraged by its collective geographical span and composite economic metrics, to articulate and canvass for democratized, multilateralized change.
For this, China is seen as the new robust regional and global institutional sculptor, blended among the others by an incandescent India which visualizes itself, with burgeoning clout, as an effective bridge between BRICS and the West. Thus they will be able to realize the partaking goals of a ‘community of common security and shared prosperity’, undergirded by a hard footprint but also permeating values rooted in collegiality, consensus and constructive collaboration.
The author is assistant professor of International Affairs and Area Studies at the Department of International Relations, Goa University, Goa, India. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of China Watch.
