BRIC Summit 2022: China touts its governance model and Russia pitches creation an EM currency
At the 14th BRICS Summit, Beijing took the opportunity to promote its governance and development models while railing against unilateral sanctions. At the virtual summit, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for promoting “true” multilateralism, boosting security cooperation, and trying to forge stronger trade ties.
Unaffiliated countries such as Argentina expressed interest in joining the bloc of large and independently-minded emerging markets. Additionally, Russia led discussions on creating a BRICS reserve currency in the face of US sanctions, which have prompted preemptive resilience efforts by China.
In an environment where dollar appears to be gradually losing its status as the global reserve currency, the BRICS’ moves would mark a serious challenge to the IMF’s special drawing rights (SDR) system and the US’s power within the institution. A basket of BRICS currencies would effectively formalize a sphere of influence and unit of currency within that sphere. This would serve Russia especially well in an effort to address the mounting pressure on its capital account.
