BRICS cooperation to be wider, brighter: researchers

Lights on buildings and bridges are lit up in Xiamen for the BRICS Summit in early September next week. [Photo: Chinanews.com]

Ahead of the BRICS Summit next month, Chinese researchers have said BRICS will enhance partnership and attract more friendly nations under the BRICS Plus platform.

CRI's Guan Chao has more.

According to a briefing from the State Council Information Office on Monday, BRICS Plus will include more emerging market economies and developing countries.

China Center for International Economic Exchanges Chief Researcher Zhang Yansheng explained BRICS Plus as an expanding "circle of friends."

"BRICS Plus means deepening our partnership among BRICS countries. It also means the five BRICS nations will forge a more and more extensive circle of friends around the globe so that more and more emerging markets and developing countries will participate under the BRICS umbrella together."

Zhang Jianping with the Ministry of Commerce further explained that BRICS Plus stands for opening - and is open to all developing nations.

"BRICS Plus is on behalf of developing nations and economies in transition. The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) per capita of these countries falls far behind that of the developed nations. In this sense, BRICS Plus is actually open to all the developing nations."

The official also noted that BRICS welcomes any countries and regions to participate.

The remarks came as officials were briefed on the agenda of the upcoming BRICS summit.

Zhang Jianping explained that the BRICS summit this year will focus on deepening partnerships among its member countries.

"The theme of this year's summit is to build closer partnerships. As we can see from the explanation of those partnerships, we will build partnerships that are peaceful and can boost development, promote global governance and deepen economic cooperation to promote common development, playing bigger role in global governance to deal with world challenges, intensifying communications and renovating the BRICS platform."

He added that BRICS should also contribute more to make the world open wider while strengthening partnerships to confront global uncertainties, including protectionism and unilateralism.

In early September, BRICS leaders will meet in China's southeastern coastal city of Xiamen for the 9th BRICS Summit.

The Summit next week also highlights E-commerce on its agenda.

Currently, the five BRICS nations are at different development stages in e-commerce.

According to Zhang Shaogang with the Department of International Trade and Economic Affairs, China intends to take steps to facilitate E-commerce cooperation among BRICS.

"One is to set up an e-commerce workshop among the BRICS nations. The other is capacity building. We are planning to run the first training session this year, and will invite related personnel from other BRICS nations to attend it. We plan to further formalize this kind of capacity-building activities in the future and run two or three training workshops and symposiums every year."

Since 2009, BRICS summits have been held annually. The nations' foreign, finance and security ministers also meet regularly.

During the past years, the five BRICS members have doubled their GDP weighting to 23 percent of the world's total.

For CRI, I'm Guan Chao.