The BRICS and collective financial statecraft

摘要

The BRICS, as the group comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa is known, represent an international relations Rorschach test. For some observers, the group is emblematic of unfolding tectonic shifts in global economic and financial governance that herald the end of a unipolar US- (and western-)led liberal world order. BRICS sceptics disagree, of course. The group plays by a rulebook not so different from that of the incumbent powers, and its capacity to challenge the status quo is limited. Moreover, declining growth performance, political challenges and shifts within the BRICS, and the fragility wrought by Chinese overlending suggest that the 'BRICS rising' narrative is hyperbolic.