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37 CHAPTER 1 A Partnership for Collective Emergence: BRICS in China’s International Strategy Da Wei1 Since the late 1970s, China has pursued an international strategy that aims at accelerating economic and social modernisation by integrating into the West-dominated world order. Under the guidance of such a strategy, though sometimes inconsistent or even contradictory with official rhetoric, China’s foreign policy has appeared West-centric and even pro-West to some extent. With West-centred policy in place, it is then an interesting development that in 2008, China, along with three other non-Western countries, Brazil, Russia and India, decided to establish a new international platform under the name ‘BRIC’, ironically a term originally coined by Goldman Sachs. This organisation has grown well since then. Besides the summit each year, ministerial level meetings and academic dialogues were held, new proposals of cooperation were raised, and in 2011 South Africa was invited to join the summit when it was hosted by China; the acronym since has been ‘BRICS’. The goal of this chapter is to analyse the role and position of BRICS in China’s international strategy, so that readers can understand why China is invested in this group. BRICS’ strengths and limitations will be examined from the Chinese perspective. CHINA’S DUAL IDENTITIES ON THE WORLD STAGE How does China perceive itself on the world stage? What kind of role does China want to play on the global platform as an emerging power? These identity issues are extremely important in order to understand China’s international strategy. China’s identity is intrinsically different from the dominant Western powers in America and Europe. Politically, China is a socialist country where the official ideology is based on Marxism and communism . Economically, China is a developing country. Though its GDP ranks number two in the world, China’s GDP per capita in the nominal values 38 CHAPTER 1 ranks only 88th according to the IMF and 91st according to the World Bank.2 Due to the size of its population, China’s economy on a per capita basis can hardly compete with the developed countries in the foreseeable future, even if its economic size grows continually over the next two or three decades. There is a deep-rooted suspicion among many ordinary Chinese, and even elite Chinese, about the West’s intentions towards China. China historically has had a unique and separate civilisation whose survival and development has not been ‘interrupted’ by non-Asian countries for thousands of years. Yet in modern history China was invaded and humiliated by Western and Japanese imperialists and fell into so-called ‘quasi-colonial’ status in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Influenced by its historic experience and the revolutionary ideology of communism, China has declared itself a member and friend of developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949, and has called for a ‘new international political and economic order’ for decades.3 China’s reform and open-door policies, in place since the late 1970s, have changed its identity profoundly. Economically, China is the second largest economy in the world after the United States (US). Almost all mainstream economists predict that China’s GDP will surpass the US at some point in next 30 years. To achieve this, China knows the importance of internationalising its economic ties and aims to become a globally integrated economy. Since the 1980s, China has reaped the benefits of globalisation. This development has given China shared interests and even identity with the developed world. As a result of these developments, China has become a much more complicated country. Politically and economically, China is still a socialist state in official discourse, but with a prosperous private economy and a much increased space of social freedom it is by no means a socialist country like the former Soviet Union. Culturally, China is of course still very different from other parts of the world, but Western culture has influenced contemporary China so deeply that traditional Chinese culture faced serious crises in the 1980s and 1990s. Many intellectuals and ordinary Chinese once almost lost their confidence about Chinese culture and aspired to ‘blue civilisation’ (Western civilisation/maritime civilisation) to replace ‘yellow civilisation’ (Chinese civilisation/continental civilisation).4 These two forces – an old identity formed from 1949 to 1979 and a new identity formed since the 1980s – have shaped and formed China’s current international identity. China views itself as a developing country and...

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