Malaysia to Join BRICS

https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/6/18/malaysias-anwar-flags-brics-membership-praises-xi-as-outstanding-leader

by eatonphil • 2 years ago

79 139 2 years ago

aljazeera.com

nroets• 2 years ago

Note that the BRICS are known for loosing their richest (and most talented) citizens. ("Brain drain").

random97498323• 2 years ago

More Western arrogance from people who can't even spell losing. It is so over.

skhunted5• 2 years ago

I think you are confusing can’t with didn’t. In this era of auto correct and typing on mobile devices a bit of leeway should be given to minor spelling mistakes.

szundi• 2 years ago

I’m curious how the broad east would compete in writing

Btw how do you know he/she was from west?

_lvbh• 2 years ago

Note that this already happens to Malaysia. It won’t get better or worse by joining BRICS.

peoplefromibiza• 2 years ago

It happens in EU too

The demographic composition of intra-EU migrants by nationality has remained broadly unchanged: Romanians make up the largest group, accounting for 27 per cent of intra-EU migrants, followed by Poles (12 per cent) and Italians (10 per cent). The main “contributors” to this exodus are the economic powerhouses – Germany and Luxembourg in the EU, but also Switzerland

throw0101a7• 2 years ago

[…] ("Brain drain").

Also: windows (in the case of Russia).

s_dev• 2 years ago

That's not what the BRICs are best known for; Brazil, Russia, India and China are all best known for being emerging super powers.

I see plenty to disagree with here -- from conflating the 'richest' with the 'most talented' to odd use of parenthesis and quotation marks to conflating brain drain with the flight of capital. Brain drain refers to people with real accomplishments or potential in academia, science, entrepreneurship etc. who aren't necessarily rich.

JumpCrisscross11• 2 years ago

Brazil, Russia, India and China are all best known for being emerging super powers

India and China, yes. Russia, South Africa and Malaysia, far from it. (Brazil is sort of a regional power, sort of not; it’s unique in being a soft power first type.)

BRICS was known for being strong economic growth candidates in the early 2000s. It was a package term for Goldman bankers to be able to sell their securities more effectively.

gizajob4• 2 years ago

SCRIMB

eatonphil7• 2 years ago

The article notes that already Egypt, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Iran and UAE have joined. So the acronym for now will just remain the original countries I guess. :)

surfingdino• 2 years ago

BRICSEE MUISA?

romwell2• 2 years ago

Hold my acronym.

I present you... the MISERIE CUBS:

----

Malaysia

India

South Africa

Ethiopia

Russia

Iran

Egypt

China

United Arab Emirates

Brazil

Saudi Arabia

----

Note: splitting into two words is necessary to keep Iran separate from Saudi Arabia & UAE, lest they get into a fight.

India / China too, to be on the safe side.

Brazil and Ethiopia have effectively no trade between them[1] (23 million — that's nothing even for Ethiopia), so putting them together makes little sense anyway.

[1]https://www.worldstopexports.com/ethiopias-top-trading-partn...

EasyMark• 2 years ago

I prefer BRIMSC, that way you hear all the letters.

throw0101a7• 2 years ago

An observation from a little while ago:

Pretty straightforward really. You combine Brazil's history of monetary stability, with Russia's respect for property rights, India's domestic tranquility, China's financial transparency, and South Africa's investment opportunities - and hey presto, you've got a new global money

* https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status/1665053372402081792

eatonphil7• 2 years ago

David Frum being a writer for a US magazine, it seems perhaps worth taking his snickering with a grain of salt.

keybored• 2 years ago

Or just taking it with a grain of salt since it’s David Frum. :)

addicted6• 2 years ago

Is there anything incorrect in what he’s said though?

It’s a few hundred character Tweet that has been reproduced fully. You don’t even need to know the author to assess the contents of the tweet.

paganel2• 2 years ago

Coming from a very pro-Israel guy like Frum that looks more like endorsement for Malaysia having done the right thing.

Also, it is high time for the US Coastal Elites to realise that they're losing the game, and they're losing the game globally, so unless they change their strategy they're going to be in for a hard time in 10-15-20 years, because at some point the money will stop flowing in.

qntmfred2• 2 years ago

what does pro-Israel have to do with anything? I don't see too many nations out there courting Hamas, PIJ, Hezbollah, Muslim Brotherhood, etc as international partners and allies.

addicted6• 2 years ago

The real money flows the other way. Western governments have realized China and Russia are not gonna become free market democracies anytime soon. That idea has failed.

So over the last couple of years they’ve started decoupling from China/Russia and their entirely export oriented economies will collapse.

India will eventually have to stop fence sitting and either choose a side or have a side chosen for them. I don’t expect India to do the smart thing here either. They haven’t for the past half century.

I find it hilarious that the RIC of BRICS are all battling each other for territory. Chinese maps since Russia’s war on Ukraine have started renaming Eastern Russian territories to Chinese. India and China are battling for territory and fighting each other. If you’re in India importing anything from China is extremely difficult. The U.S. is currently trying to get a TikTok ban through but India banned TikTok and every other Chinese website years ago.

This is apparently the wonderfully strong hegemon that’s gonna threaten the west.

What a joke.

mlrdc2• 2 years ago

Yeah well, he is an ultra-Neocon and the Neocons said the Ukraine war would not happen (when even Zelensky pleaded for more caution at the 2022 Munich "peace" conference!). Then it did happen, which is probably what they wanted.

addicted6• 2 years ago

The passive voice is doing a lot of work here.

throw0101a7• 2 years ago

Yeah well, he is an ultra-Neocon and the Neocons said the Ukraine war would not happen […]

Perhaps the people who said those things thought Putin was bluffing, or that the response was going to be weak… kind of like it was in 2014.

And yet by all accounts, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been shrugging off threats of new sanctions if he attacks Ukraine. Maybe Putin is bluffing. But if so, he has taken his bluff very far, keeping more than 100,000 Russian troops in battle-ready positions through mid-winter.
Maybe, however, Putin has assessed that Western democracies’ threat to issue sanctions “like none he’s ever seen” is a bluff? He has some good basis to doubt European resolve.

* https://archive.ph/eizpt / https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/europe-rus...

Of course if one understood Putin and his world view, it is hardly surprising:

Putin’s attachment to the old U.S.S.R. matters in another way as well. Although he is sometimes incorrectly described as a Russian nationalist, he is in fact an imperial nostalgist. The Soviet Union was a Russian-speaking empire, and he seems, at times, to dream of re-creating a smaller Russian-speaking empire within the old Soviet Union’s borders.

* https://archive.ph/qqcKH / https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/putin-ukra...

FpUser4• 2 years ago

That is one demented way of looking at it.

rldjbpin• 2 years ago

i wonder what he said about Malaysia then.

throw0101a7• 2 years ago

So per the article the PM said:

“When I first met President Xi Jinping, I was attracted to him because President Xi is one of the few outstanding leaders who talks about civilisation. In a sense, he is unique,” he was quoted as saying.

But last year we had a headline like "Malaysia rejects new China map claiming entire South China Sea":

* https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/8/31/malaysia-rejects-ne...

Curious to see how the ocean dispute will play into this.

JumpCrisscross11• 2 years ago

Curious to see how the ocean dispute will play into this

India and China were shooting at each other over long-disputed borders a few years ago. BRICS was never a security pact. (To the extent it means anything, it’s analogous to the OECD.)

Hell, it’s easier for me in America to do business with either China or India than it is for them to do business with each other.

boffinAudio9• 2 years ago

Hell, it’s easier for me in America to do business with either China or India than it is for them to do business with each other.

I don't see how you can make that claim from such a distance.

throwaway4good3• 2 years ago

Former Malysia PM Dr Mahathir Mohamad wrote the following on Twitter on the Ukraine war:

https://twitter.com/chedetofficial/status/162898188067786342...

In particular the follow up (European's love of war) is hilarious and not an uncommon view in that part of the world.

gizajob4• 2 years ago

And Malaysia is Muslim because???

kaycey2022• 2 years ago

Whatever I feel about Malaysia aside, it is not hard to take this position if you are watching events from the third world aka the global south aka the non aligned bloc or whatever you want to call it. The fact that most of us were colonised by Europeans at some point of time or other doesn’t help either.

random97498323• 2 years ago

More display of collateral damage from the unconditional support for Israel showing how much of the Islamic world has forgotten about the treatment of Uyghurs. Another win for China.

carlosjobim• 2 years ago

Why do you think they have forgotten? There has never been much of any brotherhood between Islamic nations. Even within Islamic nations, there's usually no brotherhood between classes or between clans.

And the same is sadly true for most cases where you'd expect some global brotherhood.

whatever12• 2 years ago

checks USD exchange rates

Yep it's still the only currency that matters.

Checks Indian-Chinese relations

Yep they still have effective visa bans against each other.

So what is this BRICS club exactly? A dictionary club?

krmboya• 2 years ago

Yep it's still the only currency that matters.

That's what the US govt thought when it sanctioned Russia. It only resulted in Russia falling back to their local currency without any significant problems, while making the rest of the world wary of reliance on the US dollar

whatever12• 2 years ago

So worried that USD became even stronger since the war started.

Any idea why people don't put their foot where their mouth is?

quonn• 2 years ago

without any significant problems

Can't loose anything if you have nothing - or a giant landmass, natural resources and still only an economy the size of Italy.

Etheryte3• 2 years ago

I wouldn't really say that either one of those is true. Russia has spent considerable time and effort to work around the currency problem, crypto and stablecoins are currently one very prominent set of tools they use for that. Similarly, I don't really see anyone phasing out the US dollar as a reserve currency.

romwell2• 2 years ago

Russia falling back to their local currency

Ah yes, the yuan[1].

Though the way this is going, it might as well be the Russian local currency now.

[1] https://www.newsweek.com/russia-china-yuan-ruble-1912458

dralley• 2 years ago

Despite being popular to claim otherwise, it's causing significant problems for Russia, just in somewhat specific ways.

chipdart6• 2 years ago

That's what the US govt thought when it sanctioned Russia. It only resulted in Russia falling back to their local currency without any significant problems, while making the rest of the world wary of reliance on the US dollar

I think you're trying to spin reality into a far rosier picture.

Russia is now bounded to do international trade with any currency other than the ruble, and it is famously piling on a huge trade deficit with India while stockpiling rupees without any way of exchanging them for anything. You're talking about a scenario that not even Russia is able to use Russia's currency in direct trades with other BRICS members.

What does this tell you about "significant problems"?

while making the rest of the world wary of reliance on the US dollar

You're commenting as if no one in the world was aware of the US dolar hegemony, and even if it was anything new. That's not what's happening in reality. Even the eurozone has been trying to leverage the euro as an alternative to the US dolar in markets like oil, and hasn't been that successful. If a trading block and economic powerhouse like the eurozone isn't able to shake that off, what tells you that Russia, whose economy barely matches Italy's, is an exception?

JumpCrisscross11• 2 years ago

resulted in Russia falling back to their local currency

It took until May of this year—over 2 years from first sanctions—for the yuan to hit top currency on the Moscow Exchange [1].

Of course sanctions hurt both America and Russia. But they hurt Russia more. Within a year, it will be a total suzerainty of China’s, a dynamic that’s beginning to become apparent in the concessions the latter is already demanding on resource pricing [2].

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/13/investing/us-russia-sanctions...

[2] https://www.ft.com/content/f7a34e3e-bce9-4db9-ac49-a092f382c...

riffraff2• 2 years ago

It's crazy that a journalistic expression became a real organization thing, and now journalists treat it as if it meant something.

Joining BRICS is akin to joining the "third world": joining it means nothing and even the original meaning it was supposed to represent has long been lost and forgotten.

vidarh2• 2 years ago

Unlike "the third world", BRICS has a formal organisation, a headquarter, regular summits, a development bank (unimaginateively named "New Development Bank"), a liquidity support framework, and others. It's not a very close association, but it's also far more than just a label.

dagaci• 2 years ago

BRICS is something which people seem to have strong feelings about. For india and china who are rivals, BRICS may offer mechanics which enable them to manage their rivalies, especially given what may be seen as the declining influence of the UN (have people noticed that the massive moon landing India is not even a security council member!).

JumpCrisscross11• 2 years ago

For india and china who are rivals, BRICS may offer mechanics which enable them to manage their rivalies

BRICS has been totally absent in the Sino-Indian conflict [1]. Given China and India are its anchor economic heavyweights, and Russia an emerging Chinese suzerainty, it’s in nobody’s interest to bring that issue to the forum.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Indian_border_dispute

boffinAudio9• 2 years ago

People outside the BRICS sphere of influence don't want to see that rivalry be resolved through economic means - they'd rather profit (through their own military industrial complex' investments) from the turmoil that comes from invalidating BRICS as a concept within their own sphere.

However, there are billions of people within the BRICS context. Billions and billions. I think this is why Western-aligned folks are in such fear of it as a concept for world diplomacy.

red-iron-pine• 2 years ago

BRICS is something which people seem to have strong feelings about. For india and china who are rivals, BRICS may offer mechanics which enable them to manage their rivalies, especially given what may be seen as the declining influence of the UN (have people noticed that the massive moon landing India is not even a security council member!).

BRICS gets strong feelings because it's an made-up economic bloc created by Goldman Sachs in 2001 as a way to describe powerful developing economies. A few ETFs / Index funds were created based on that... and mostly fell apart, since all of the growth was in China.

Brazil is something of a high-tariff basketcase, South Africa is a borderline failed state and can't keep the lights on, Russia is eviscerating itself in Ukraine and looking at demographic collapse regardless of how many Ukrainian kids they kidnap, and China v India isn't cooling down -- they just had a sword & rock fight in the mountains not too long ago. Like, one of my big bets for 2000-2100 AD is a Chinese-Indian War, which has the potential to end life on Earth, much like US-USSR MAD fears did 90 years ago.

Havoc• 2 years ago

You forget that the EU also started pretty loose and took a while to get going.

This is rapidly turning into a collection of everyone that isn’t strongly west aligned. While it seems directionless for now they do have that in common.

Don’t think it’s safe to dismiss it given direction of travel

Ekaros• 2 years ago

Also it might not be anything like EU or NATO. But instead of system to setup financial system outside the west. And here by financial system I mean how trade and transactions are done, not necessarily anything political about free trade and so on...

alephnerd5• 2 years ago

So what is this BRICS club exactly

It's called "blunting".

The best way to undermine alliances is to be a part of them and undermine consensus.

China did this to APEC in the 1990s and the WTO in the 2000s, and India is doing the same in BRICS and SCO.

Because this is a zero-sum competition, this means if one is a member of an alliance, the other needs to join as well to blunt their relative advantage.

TiredOfLife• 2 years ago

BRICS is just a rebrand of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis_powers

JumpCrisscross11• 2 years ago

BRICS expanding cements its role as a Chinese geopolitical project, and underlines India’s loss of power within it [1]. (Russia used to balance the scales, but that’s no longer an option.)

It isn’t explicitly anti-American yet. But if it takes that tack, I’d expect Egypt, the UAE and India to drop out while leaving Malaysia in an uncomfortable place.

[1] https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/china-...

boffinAudio9• 2 years ago

It isn’t explicitly anti-American yet.

It is certainly not pro-petrodollar.

Which, given the blood the petrodollar spills, is probably a good thing for billions of people to get behind.

JumpCrisscross11• 2 years ago

is certainly not pro-petrodollar

As in it’s not an anachronism from the 1970s, yes. BRICS (né BRIC) wasn’t coined until 2001 [1].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRIC

throwawayccp• 2 years ago

As a long as India & Brazil in the group, China can't turn it into an anti-western group without a doubt.

America should take QUAD to the next level ASAP

alephnerd5• 2 years ago

America should take QUAD to the next level ASAP

India doesn't want that, because India uses Russia as a mediator with China [0][1][2], and India wants to maintain the current status quo.

[0] https://eastasiaforum.org/2020/10/23/how-russia-emerged-as-k...

[1] https://www.orfonline.org/research/the-india-factor-in-china...

[2] https://www.nbr.org/publication/india-and-the-quad-when-a-we...

alephnerd5• 2 years ago

I disagree with that interpretation.

BRICS expansion has essentially blunted it, as every expansion require unanimous support of [edir: the founding] all 5 members.

There's a reason Turkey (opposition from India due to it's military support for Pakistan) and Bangladesh (opposition from China due to Sheikh Hasina's dependence on India for sanction relief) weren't accepted.

Every state that has been accepted in the expansion is a state that has strong economic ties to both China and India, thus canceling out any potential bias.

- UAE's 1st and 2nd largest trade partners are China and India

- KSA's 1st and 2nd largest trade partners are China and India

- Ethiopia's 1st and 2nd largest partners are China and India.

- China is Egypt's largest import market, but India is one of Egypt's largest export market and is Egypt's credit guaranteer.

The addition of Malaysia follows this pattern as well.

BRICS has become as meaningless as APEC, because India ended up doing the same thing that China did to APEC in the 90s when Jiang Zemin unilaterally declared it cannot be a Community like the EC.

JumpCrisscross11• 2 years ago

every expansion require unanimous support of all 5 members

Isn’t it nine [1]?

Every state that has been accepted in the expansion is a state that has strong economic ties to both China and India, thus canceling out any potential bias

This is true. But looking at military vulnerability, Malaysia is obviously subject to one more than the other. (China’s security relationship with Russia and Iran further undermining India.)

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRICS

mlrdc2• 2 years ago

I think laughing about BRICS, like so many do here, is not very fruitful. These are countries with massive natural resources, and the cavalier style towards them that the current Western governments is outright dangerous.

I want to make it clear that I'm not pro-BRICS, but we have to coexist and buy their resources in the future. Especially Europe.

teyc• 2 years ago

If you look at ASEAN as an example of how these loose trade bloc works, they are durable, they tend to be respectful of one another’s sovereignty, and they haven’t fought one another for 60 years. There may be deals for cross border investments, economic zones. Importantly they all seek to move away from US influence.

MaxPock• 2 years ago

Why do Westerners hate the idea of BRICS so much ?

If western institutions and way of life are superior ,then capital will naturally gravitate towards them ..

JumpCrisscross11• 2 years ago

Why do Westerners hate the idea of BRICS so much?

Goldman Sachs coined the term BRICS. If the institution worked, we’d see Western finance rushing to join it.

Nobody hates BRICS. It’s just sort of pathetic. As a security consortium, it’s a failure. As a trade consortium, it’s a failure. It talks about a dollar alternative, yet when Russia needed one China and India reverted to their own currencies.

It’s a dumb idea that made sense when Russia could balance India and China. That balance has failed. There isn’t a unified global south.

stewx• 2 years ago

Because member states like China and Russia are illiberal and left to their own devices pose a risk to global security and human rights. When these illiberal countries band together, the West loses economic and political leverage over them to change their ways.

addicted6• 2 years ago

People don’t “hate” the BRICS.

Take away Western purchases of Russian gas for 2 decades and Russia collapses. Take away the encouragement of outsourcing manufacturing from the West to China since the 1980s and the Chinese miracle never happens.

People laugh at BRICS because the BRICS is a joke.

- Brazil is relatively stable but is a largely globally meaningless nation which does little more than export tourism and the Amazon. It’s highly replaceable in the world order.

- Russia is on the verge of collapse. Their strength lay in the appearance of their military strength. But they’ve struggled to defeat a country which didn’t have a military a decade ago and the modern 21st century technology whose sales they’re depending on is failing against Cold War NATO leftovers. They do have natural resources and could have spent the next few decades getting massively rich off selling gas to Germany but they killed that golden goose by starting a land war in Europe.

- India is a country with extremely high potential. Lots of people, enough educated people, etc. However, politics is a disaster, and environmental issues are crushing India. Yet India is poised to take off but their entire growth is based on trading and integrating with the West and yet India keeps ideologically resisting that like it has for half a century and instead aligning with BRICS, whose largest member China is currently fighting a territorial war with India and Indian companies cannot import products and have Chinese websites are banned in India and vice versa.

- China is a one of a kind country. Ridiculously strong manufacturing, extremely capable citizenry, etc. But China is fighting with every neighbor. No one trusts them. Least of all their fellow BRICS member India. And they’re facing a demographic timebomb and despite their economic successes people would much rather emigrate from China than immigrate to it. That’s not a recipe for success a decade+ down the line.

- South Africa is a basket case of an economy. And their politics just got worse. South Africa can enter the conversation when their government becomes capable of delivering widely available drinking water to their population and not have people thirsty because of political corruption.

aaomidi2• 2 years ago

So let’s see this here how this compares to the US

- we’re on the verge of electing a fascist into the country, primarily because the opposition also sucks. Politically we’re a mess.

- we’ve caused the largest number of modern world fights and deaths. And now we’ve applied our stamp of approval on a genocide where most of the rest of the world is disgusted by us.

- our public infrastructure is collapsing and crumbling. We have no high speed transportation. We have lead in our pipes (flint was just the tip of the iceberg). We have our primary plane manufacturer dying and unable to produce a plane people want to go on. We really don’t have anything to add to the table until we can stop poisoning people due to political corruption.

Anyway it’s easy to selectively pick points and make fun of them.

hakfoo• 2 years ago

They've gotten at least one thing right: they recognized that the current dominant Western institutions have left the Global South with a bad taste.

Western powers have burnt a lot of bridges there over the years. There's been 75 years of coups and interventions, clumsy to downright evil charity efforts, foreign military bases that long outstay their welcome, "development" schemes that lean more towards exploitative than actually bootstrapping, and financial timebombs that result in imposition of austerity and fire-sales of public goods.

China has shown it's possible to massively modernize without completely selling out, so they are an aspirational model for the rest of the developing world. When they come and say "we want mutual progress", it doesn't have the immediate untrustworthy smell it would coming out of an American mouth. What is Washington/London/Brussels doing right now to win back that audience? Even if the West can offer a better deal than Belt-and-Road, itself questionable, will Africa and South America even be willing to listen anymore?

edpichler• 2 years ago

"WANTS to join BRICS".

Malaysia to Join BRICS

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