BRICS Cooperation: Reshaping the New Global Governance Order and Drawing a New Picture of Human Civilization

——Keynote Speech at the BRICS Academic Conference in Brazil

By Wang Wen 

On 29 May, scholars, diplomats, and policymakers from across the world will land in Brasilia for an international symposium that will help chart the course for the BRICS+ during Brazil’s pivotal presidency. Wang Wen, Dean of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, and Dean of School of Global Leadership at Renmin University of China has been invited to deliver a keynote speech at the opening ceremony. The speech is exclusively published as follows:

Dear scholars and colleagues:

 

Hello everyone!

It is a great honor to gather with thinkers from more than 30 emerging economies in beautiful Brazil.

Today, we are discussing not only the future of an economic cooperation mechanism, but also a major proposition concerning the development direction of human civilization in the 21st century.

The BRICS countries have grown from an economic concept to a key force in global governance, and their significance has long surpassed the BRICS geopolitical boundaries - it represents the reconstruction of the global order by emerging forces accounting for 50% of the world's population, and carries the historical mission of innovation in the South-South cooperation paradigm.

Breaking the deadlock and reconstruction: Three revolutionary contributions of the BRICS mechanism

Breaking the unipolar hegemony: fundamental adjustment of the global power structure

When the BRICS countries proposed "promoting the reform of international financial institutions" at the first summit in 2009, the IMF quota reform had been stagnant for ten years. Today, the New Development Bank (NDB) has approved projects totaling over $30 billion, and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA) has built a $100 billion safety net, proving with action that global governance does not need to be monopolized by a few countries forever.

The BRICS countries have promoted the reform of the IMF quota and defended the "special and differential treatment" of developing countries in the WTO, which is essentially rewriting the logic of the global rule-making power distribution over the past 100 years.

Innovative civilization dialogue: Beyond the "center-periphery" communication paradigm

We are witnessing the maturity of the first non-Western-led multilateral cooperation mechanism in human history. The mutual recognition of technical standards in the digital economy among BRICS countries (such as 5G spectrum coordination), the joint research of the BRICS vaccine research and development center, and the data sharing of remote sensing satellite constellations mark the shift of the knowledge production system from one-way output to multi-directional coordination.

More importantly, this cooperation always follows the principles of "informality, gradualism and consensus" - this is the modern practice of the wisdom of "harmony but difference" in Eastern civilization.

Reshaping the ethics of development: Proving the diversity of the path to modernization

When the BRICS countries increased their mutual trade volume by 300% in 15 years but did not follow the traditional free trade zone to establish a unified customs union, this precisely reflects the respect for development autonomy.

China's socialist market economy, India's digital public infrastructure, Brazil's bioenergy revolution, South Africa's community medical model, and Russia's Arctic development experience together constitute a vivid map of "pluralistic modernity". This non-ideological pragmatic cooperation provides new ideas for mankind to solve the eternal problems of growth and distribution, efficiency and fairness.

Reefs and storms: realistic challenges facing the BRICS ship

The tension between mechanism and flexibility

The BRICS is currently still a "forum-type" cooperation mechanism, and the New Development Bank only accounts for 3% of the financing scale of global multilateral development institutions. When the member countries expand from 5 to 10, how to balance decision-making efficiency and representation? How to establish a binding action framework in specific areas such as food security and climate financing? This tests our institutional design wisdom.

Structural contradiction between the right to development and the right to speak

Although the BRICS countries contribute 50% of global economic growth, they only have 13.24% of the voting rights in the World Bank and less than 5% of the local currency settlement in the SWIFT system.

What is more serious is that some countries have made technical standards and industrial chain reviews universally secure. In 2023 alone, BRICS companies have encountered 127 "long-arm jurisdiction" sanctions. This reveals a cruel reality: the counterattack of the vested interests of the stock system may be more intense than expected.

The dialectical relationship between value consensus and interest differences

The different positions of member countries on the Ukrainian crisis and the technical disputes on trade subsidy policies remind us that emerging economies are not homogeneous entities. When South Africa's per capita GDP is only 1/4 of China's and India's dependence on energy imports reaches 90%, how to coordinate short-term demands and long-term vision? This requires strategic patience beyond traditional geopolitical thinking.

Crossing the fault line: a pragmatic path to build the BRICS cooperation version 2.0

Building the physical pillars of the "three communities"

Food and energy community: establish a joint reserve mechanism, build a 10 million ton strategic reserve covering wheat, corn and fertilizer, and develop a joint BRICS agricultural science and technology research plan.

Digital Innovation Community: promote the interconnection between India's unified payment interface (UPI) and China's cross-border payment system (CIPS), and set up joint laboratories in the fields of 6G and quantum computing.

Green Finance Community: issue "carbon neutral" special drawing rights, and achieve a green project share of more than 60% of the New Development Bank by 2027.

Build a "dual circulation" system network

Internal circulation: pilot the BRICS Free Trade Zone early harvest plan, and take the lead in realizing mutual recognition of rules of origin in five fields such as electric vehicles and medical devices.

External circulation: establish a "BRICS+" policy coordination mechanism with the African Union and ASEAN.

Innovate the practice platform for mutual learning among civilizations

Establish a digital library of BRICS cultural heritage, publish the "Multiple Modernities Development Report" every year, and support member countries' universities to jointly open a discipline system of "Global South Studies". More importantly, we should use the successful practices of BRICS countries in poverty reduction (China), community health (South Africa), digital governance (India) and other fields to construct a narrative discourse different from neoliberalism.

Conclusion: Let the torch of history illuminate the future

Dear colleagues, when the Berlin Conference in 1884 divided Africa with a ruler, they would not have thought that 140 years later on the Brazilian plateau, once marginalized countries were redefining the grammar of global governance.

BRICS cooperation is essentially a quiet revolution - it is not to destroy the existing system, but to prove that the world can achieve common evolution in mutual respect.

Just as different tree species in the Amazon rainforest share nutrients through underground mycorrhizal networks. Let us use this wisdom as a guide to build a truly inclusive and sustainable new form of human civilization.

When our descendants look back on this era, may they remember: at the crossroads of history, there was a group of thinkers and practitioners from the "Global South" who chose cooperation rather than confrontation and wrote new possibilities for humanity.

Thank you all!