Chinese President Xi Jinping to host virtual BRICS summit

The Chinese leader will hold online talks with the leaders of Brazil, India, Russia and South Africa later this month
The event takes place in the shadow of Russia’s war in Ukraine and Moscow is keen to develop links with other emerging economies after being hit by sanctions

Brics

Josephine Ma

Published: 7:04pm, 17 Jun 2022

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Beijing will host a virtual annual summit for the BRICS nations – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – on June 23.

President Xi Jinping will chair the summit, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying announced on Friday.

The event will be preceded and followed by two other virtual meetings to foster economic ties between the countries. The follow-up event on June 24 aims to build sustainable economic relations between the BRICS countries as well as other emerging economies.

While Russia has been facing immense pressure such as economic sanctions following its invasion of Ukraine, the BRICS nations – except Brazil – have abstained from several United Nations votes condemning Russia.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro highlighted the country’s neutrality, while Brazil’s ambassador to the UN voted in favour of condemning Russia’s invasion.

On Wednesday, Xi had a phone call with Russian leader Vladimir Putin during which he reaffirmed his support for Russia on issues of sovereignty and security.

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China has also repeatedly urged Western countries not to sanction Russia.

Just a month before Russia’s attack on Ukraine, Xi and Putin met in Beijing during the Winter Olympics, where Xi said there were “no limits” to the cooperation between the two countries, although it is unclear if he knew about Putin’s plans.

The 14th annual summit for the BRICS leaders is to be held at a time when European countries are stepping up their pressure on Russia.

The leaders of France, Germany, Italy and Romania travelled to Kyiv this week and pledged their support for Ukraine’s candidacy to join the European Union.

This leaders of the five BRICS nations pictured at last years online summit, hosted by India. Photo: AP

On the other hand, Russia is trying to forge economic and financial deals with other countries to help the country buffer the blow caused by US and European economic sanctions.

The BRICS countries have been discussing different initiatives to move away from the US dollar. Russia is keen to accelerate the progress after it was expelled from the SWIFT international bank transfer system.

The sanctions have frozen half of Russia’s gold and foreign exchange reserves, which stood at around US$600 billion.

Earlier this month, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov called on the BRICS countries to coordinate measures to stabilise the economic situation, saying global monetary tightening and sanctions could cause global stagflation and a food crisis.

In April, he urged the BRICS partners in a ministerial meeting to arrange trade settlements in their respective currencies and to avoid the use of the US dollar.

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Siluanov, told the meeting: “New sanctions are destroying the foundation of the existing international monetary and financial system based on the US dollar.

“This pushes us to the need to speed up work in the following areas: the use of national currencies for export-import operations, the integration of payment systems and cards, our own financial messaging system and the creation of an independent BRICS rating agency.”