BRICS summit to usher in new "golden decade" for cooperation

The 11th BRICS summit to take place here on Nov. 13-14 is poised to usher in a second "golden decade" for more fruitful cooperation of the emerging-market group.

The past 10 years since its first summit in Russia are suitably dubbed a "golden decade" for BRICS, which was originally made up of Brazil, Russia, India and China, and expanded in 2011 to include South Africa.

With cooperation among its members continuously booming in various fields, BRICS in 2018 accounted for about 23.5 percent of global gross domestic product and 16.3 percent of global trade.

The summit this year, themed "BRICS: economic growth for an innovative future," offers an opportunity to push forward their cooperation in scientific and technological innovation, as well as finance and digital economy, and to bolster their concerted drive to combat organized crime, narco-trafficking and money-laundering.

At last year's summit in South Africa, BRICS agreed to build a partnership for a new industrial revolution, showing the members' acute awareness of the need to tap cooperation potential in such groundbreaking areas as digital economy and smart manufacturing, so as to forge a more sustainable and robust engine for BRICS' long-term development. The BRICS countries should march forward in this regard.

Currently, unilateralism and trade protectionism are rearing their ugly heads around the globe, and the world is undergoing profound changes unseen in a century. Just as Chinese President Xi Jinping has pointed out, the international community is facing "four deficits" in global affairs, namely governance deficit, trust deficit, peace deficit and development deficit.

As a result, global free trade is losing steam, the prospects for economic growth have been dampened, and the international community is grappling with a huge amount of uncertainty.

Over the years, the BRICS members have held high the flag of multilateralism, played an important role in promoting openness, equality, transparency and inclusiveness in global governance, and become a major force for stability and progress in international affairs.

During last year's summit, BRICS issued the Johannesburg Declaration, in which the leaders pledged to jointly strengthen multilateralism and speak up for a fairer, more equal, more democratic and more representative world order.

The BRICS members should come together even closer to safeguard the rules-based multilateral trading system, the international system with the United Nations at its core and the international order based on international law.

Stronger BRICS cooperation has also helped the emerging economies and developing countries enjoy a bigger say in global governance. So far, the BRICS countries have achieved substantial headway in quota and governance reforms in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. In 2017, the bloc's voting share in the World Bank rose to 13.24 percent, and its share in IMF climbed to 14.91 percent.

In the throes and aftermath of the epic global financial crisis 10 years ago, BRICS members made a strategic decision to team up against the challenges of the times.

Now faced with new and unprecedented challenges, the BRICS countries should once again rise to the call of history and further enhance their all-around cooperation, so that they will make greater productive contributions to the world in the second "golden decade."