the CIA draft emails on dude must be filthy
No thread on BRICS? -- Official "BRICS" thread - India vs China? 👀
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BRICS is fake
It's not an anti-NATO, it's not going to replace the dollar, and it's not going to control global economic growth.
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Xi Jinping dominates Brics summit as leaders endorse Beijing-led expansion
China’s president given special treatment at gathering that moves the bloc closer to his vision of creating a G7 rival
www.ft.com
Xi Jinping dominates Brics summit as leaders endorse Beijing-led expansion
China’s president given special treatment at gathering that moves the bloc closer to his vision of creating a G7 rival
August 25 2023
South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa was the official host of the Brics summit this week that agreed to more than double the membership of the emerging-markets bloc, but the true VIP was his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.
The Chinese president was given special treatment from the minute he arrived ahead of the other leaders for a state visit that saw him inducted into the ‘Order of South Africa’, a recently created honour.
“The people of South Africa salute you, President Xi Jinping,” Ramaphosa said after he met Xi at the airport, an honour none of the other leaders were given. Even India’s Narendra Modi, leader of the second biggest Brics economy, was greeted by Ramaphosa’s deputy.
Xi’s importance can also be seen in the anxiety created when he failed to appear for his first big address of the summit to businesspeople from across the Brics bloc. No explanation was given and he showed up later in the evening for a leaders’ dinner, but it was a low-point of a carefully choreographed event.
The real evidence of Xi’s importance was the expansion that looks set to addArgentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to the five-member bloc. This fits into Xi’s plan that China should lead the developing world in confronting US “hegemony”, even as he also grapples with an economic slowdown and deflation at home.
The Brics going from five to 11 countries “meets the expectations of the international community, and serves the common interests of emerging markets and developing countries”, Xi said.
“I would read the pace and volume of expansion as artful negotiations by China,” said Ziyanda Stuurman, senior Africa analyst at the Eurasia Group think-tank, reflecting what has been seen as a diplomatic victory for Beijing.
This despite the expanded grouping facing more internal contradictions than ever before if China wants it to truly rival the G7 and other western-dominated institutions.
Countries such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE, traditional military allies of the west, and large IMF borrowers Argentina and Egypt, were among those invited to join Brazil, Russia, India, and South Africa in an expansion largely brokered by the club’s biggest economy.
“Brics started the expansion process during China’s chairmanship,” said Li Kexin, China’s Brics special envoy. “China has since been working with other Brics members to steadily advance the expansion process.”
Ethiopia, Africa’s second most populous nation, will bring up the rear as the Brics’ smallest member by GDP but it is a key debtor to Beijing.
Signs at the summit of China’s export strength helped to conceal worries about slow domestic growth. Chinese state-owned carmaker Chery was “official presidential vehicle partner” for the event, providing a fleet of cars to ferry international delegates around South Africa’s financial centre.
And though Ramaphosa raised with Xi “the need to narrow the trade deficit between South Africa and China”, which was more than $10bn last year, deals his government signed with Beijing sought to promote Chinese technology to overcome South Africa’s punishing rolling blackouts.
Xi’s delegation did its own bit to expand the trade surplus with South Africa, taking over hotels and flying in by special cargo plane all the goods needed to completely refurbish them.
“They brought their beds, their mattresses, their curtains, their carpets, everything. There was nothing South African in the particular presidential room of the president of China,” Bheki Cele, South Africa’s police minister, told a broadcaster.
Analysts pointed out that it was in no Brics member’s political interest this week to raise the economic elephant in the summit room: growing problems in China’s infrastructure and property-driven investment model, which will affect commodity exporters such as South Africa and Brazil.
Xi also suggested at a meeting on the summit sidelines with African leaders this week that China would “better harness its resources for co-operation with Africa”, a sign that Beijing’s diplomacy is quietly reflecting these economic shifts.
The Johannesburg summit was also noteworthy for a rare bilateral meeting between Xi and Modi in which they agreed to de-escalate tensions on the Sino-Indian border that have led to serious skirmishes in recent years. The two powers otherwise remain locked in a growing security dilemma as India expands strategic ties to the US and other western states.
Indonesia, a natural Brics candidate in economic terms as the world’s fourth most populous country and South-east Asia’s largest economy, also appears cautious about adhering to an increasingly China-dominated club.
Jakarta was set to be among this week’s invitees, but declined to submit its interest as President Joko Widodo’s government debates whether to join, despite fast-growing economic ties to other members.
Yet despite Xi’s success this week in building momentum to turn the Brics into a pre-eminent international forum, achieving this remains a challenge, analysts said.
“The G7 is framed in a positive way, as grouping together as like-minded liberal democracies,” said Priyal Singh, senior researcher at South Africa’s Institute for Security Studies. “The Brics group is the complete opposite of that, as a hodgepodge of countries.
“The only common unifying issue for them to come together is in opposition to the current international system, as dominated by the west.”
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India Is Pushing Back Against China in South Asia
The jostling between India and China for influence in South Asia will likely prove crucial to the fate of U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy. The good news, at least for now, is that New Delhi has been mostly successful in pushing back against Beijing's rising influence across the region.
www.rand.org
How Joe Biden is transforming America’s Asian alliances
America is working to deter China even as it defends Europe from Russia
How Joe Biden is transforming America’s Asian alliances
America is working to deter China even as it defends Europe from Russia
Aug 24th 2023
The USS McCampbell, the HMAS Canberra and the USS Ronald Reagan sail in the Coral Sea
The rivalry between great powers involves much jostling over alliances. What does this mean in practice and who is winning? The past month has provided a chance to examine two competing alliance-building efforts. One is the push, led by China, to create a bloc of emerging economies that acts as a counterweight to the West. This was the aim of the brics summit held this week in Johannesburg, attended by Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping, the leaders of India and China. The other is America’s strengthening of its defence network in the Pacific. Of the two efforts, America’s is more convincing.
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The gathering of the brics brought together Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The stated goals were to expand the club’s membership and deepen its capabilities in areas such as development lending and financial payments. The event showed a widespread appetite for a less Western world order: six countries were invited to join the brics starting in January 2024, including Argentina, Iran and Saudi Arabia. But it also showed how such a disparate group will struggle to be effective.
If the aim is to project common values, it hardly helped that Vladimir Putin had to address the summit by video-link—for fear that the South African hosts would have to enforce a global arrest warrant against him for war crimes. As the group expands, tensions may rise: India fears its influence will be diluted, giving more sway to China. Defence co-operation is probably out of the question. The effort to create a common financial infrastructure (let alone share a currency) looks too ambitious for countries with very different economies and politics. Rather than a body capable of acting widely and consistently in a coordinated way, building global norms and institutions, the brics may end up with a significant but more limited role. Its members may co-operate on narrow issues where they agree, such as rich countries’ obligations in the energy transition, and sometimes act together to attack or try to block Western-led initiatives.
Contrast that with America’s alliance-building. The war in Ukraine has reinvigorated nato, which has expanded its membership to include Finland and probably Sweden. President Joe Biden has also been working in Asia to counter China. On August 18th he hosted a summit at Camp David with the leaders of Japan and South Korea who, putting aside their old bitterness, agreed to intensify ballistic-missile co-operation and establish a military hotline. Earlier Mr Biden struck deals to let America use more military bases in the Philippines and Papua New Guinea.
Meanwhile, the “unbreakable” defence relationship with Australia is deepening, following the aukus agreement struck in March, amid a flurry of equipment deals and military exercises. Should war break out with China, the Aussies seem the most willing to fight at America’s side. Australian land, sea and air bases are expanding to receive more American forces. Under the aukus deal, Australia is gaining its own long-range weapons, such as nuclear-powered (but not nuclear-armed) submarines to be developed jointly with America and Britain. The three partners want to work on other military technologies, from hypersonic missiles to underwater drones.
Taken together the “latticework” of security agreements, shows how America’s long-heralded pivot to Asia is accelerating. Mr Biden is proving that America and its allies can deter China (and Russia). More could be done. Congress should agree to sell Virginia-class submarines to Australia in the 2030s as a step to acquiring the aukus subs in the 2040s, and to expand submarine-building capacity. It should waive fiddly restrictions, such as the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (itar), to make the partners’ defence co-operation seamless.
These plans still have weaknesses. Mr Biden’s protectionism prevents America from offering an economic counterweight to China, the largest trading partner for most Asian economies. He shows no sign of joining cptpp, a trade pact whose precursor was negotiated by Barack Obama and ditched by Donald Trump. While China complains about an “Asian nato”, there is no mutual commitment by America and its Asian allies to defend each other, let alone go to war over Taiwan. Australia’s government, if it is to sustain bipartisan public support, must also be more candid about the costs of the alliance.
Last, if Mr Trump becomes president in 2024, Mr Biden’s rejuvenation of America’s security alliances could yet be undone. All the more reason for America and its allies to keep advancing at speed. The more they can lock into place, and the more Congress can demonstrate that the vision for Asian security is bipartisan, the better for all. The past month shows that America’s network of friendships and alliances is alive and kicking, and that creating competing alternatives will be hard.■
Africa's prominent role in the new "BRICS6" – The China Project
Africa's prominent role in the new "BRICS6"
thechinaproject.com
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
HL's Finest probably have BRICS tramp stamps and live in Che Shirts
Saudi Arabia and Iran are really going to round the club out nicely. Saudi just got caught killing hundreds of Ethiopian migrants(among their usual horrors) and Iran who spent the last year or two killing and raping women because they wouldn't wear hijabs(among their usual horrors).
Real nice
Saudi Arabia and Iran are really going to round the club out nicely. Saudi just got caught killing hundreds of Ethiopian migrants(among their usual horrors) and Iran who spent the last year or two killing and raping women because they wouldn't wear hijabs(among their usual horrors).
Real nice
South Africa is supporting India and Ethiopia in their positions in this new BRICS. Ethiopia has the mineral wealth to offer and brings another potential energy producer. But Ethiopia's oil/gas fields are in the Somali populated areas in the Ogaden desert which has had fields attacked in the past.
Russia mollified India as the Russians pushed for Egypt while the Chinese pushed for the UAE and Saudis to join this new expanded BRICS.
Brazil and China are opening this up to Argentina.
All of this is aimed at expanding trade in mutual currencies. Ain't no way there's going to be a shared BRICS currency anytime soon.
India is terrified of secondary sanctions so they're always hedging. They will not stop buying Iranian and Russian oil. But their issues with China are not ending anytime soon.
Conversely, the Saudis have gotten to the point where they don't care about what the U.S. will do. MBS wants to get in on more oil sales in yuan.
If BRICS is bringing along Saudi, UAE, Iran, and in 2024 bringing in Algeria, Kazakhstan and Venezuela, that gets to 90% of all oil produced in the world. That is not good for the dollar supremacy going into the 2030s.
And this is the next stage of the Russian-initiated and Chinese-finalized rapprochement between Riyadh and Tehran.
Russia mollified India as the Russians pushed for Egypt while the Chinese pushed for the UAE and Saudis to join this new expanded BRICS.
Brazil and China are opening this up to Argentina.
All of this is aimed at expanding trade in mutual currencies. Ain't no way there's going to be a shared BRICS currency anytime soon.
India is terrified of secondary sanctions so they're always hedging. They will not stop buying Iranian and Russian oil. But their issues with China are not ending anytime soon.
Conversely, the Saudis have gotten to the point where they don't care about what the U.S. will do. MBS wants to get in on more oil sales in yuan.
If BRICS is bringing along Saudi, UAE, Iran, and in 2024 bringing in Algeria, Kazakhstan and Venezuela, that gets to 90% of all oil produced in the world. That is not good for the dollar supremacy going into the 2030s.
And this is the next stage of the Russian-initiated and Chinese-finalized rapprochement between Riyadh and Tehran.
USA is making deals with Kazakhstan and Venezuela as we speak...there seems to be movement on Iran.
The Saudis seem like they're begging rot eh hand of god...