The five BRIC countries cannot become the anti-G7 stronghold, they cannot even be called a group

South Africa will host a three-day summit of BRICS leaders starting on the 22nd. Some believe that this alliance of "non-Western" countries will compete with the Group of Seven (G7). Bloomberg News columnist Andreas Kluth put forward a different view. He believes that the West does not need to believe too much in the grand occasion of this summit, because they have their own calculations and cannot reach a consensus, and some people are wanted and absent.

The BRICS countries were originally composed of Brazil, Russia, India, and China. They took the English prefixes of the four countries' names "B, R, I, and C", and the pronunciation is the same as "brick" in English; South Africa later joined, "brick" block" becomes "many bricks" (BRICS). As for the word "gold", it is just the icing on the cake when translating. It is a metaphor that these countries are emerging economies, and it is a blessing.

Crews pointed out in a witty article that the current national population of the five BRICS countries together accounts for 40% of the world's population, and other southern countries may also join. The BRICS like to portray themselves as a non-Western or anti-Western geopolitical camp, offering developing countries an alternative to American hegemony, but they are not and will never be. group.

To make a group debut, we need a gimmick

Crews said, first of all, everyone needs to know that when you want to publish an idea, such as a policy, an institution, an organization or a group, if their initials can just make up a word with a great image, then the image Often more grandiose than actual concept. This is the case with the BRIC countries (when there was no South Africa).

The person who coined the word "golden brick" was the economist Jim O'Neill (Jim O'Neill). When he called out the word in 2001, he worked for Goldman Sachs and needed a resounding title to describe some seemingly promising futures. , but otherwise have no apparent commonalities.

The BRICS countries are also happy to be labeled with this label, because it fits two trends of the times: abbreviations are collectively called Zhengbang, and blocs are also popular. Crews believes that the emergence of the trend of blocs was born after the international transition from the bipolar world of the United States and the Soviet Union to the unipolar hegemony of the United States during the Cold War, and countries assumed that the future should return to a multipolar world, thinking that they should belong to a certain Factions, or join several, so the gangs everywhere.