THE WISDOM FUND: News & Views
July 15, 2014
Asia Times

BRICS Against Washington Consensus

by Pepe Escobar

The headline news is that this Tuesday in Fortaleza, northeast Brazil, the BRICS group of emerging powers (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) fights the (Neoliberal) World (Dis)Order via a new development bank and a reserve fund set up to offset financial crises.

The devil, of course, is in the details of how they'll do it.

It's been a long and winding road since Yekaterinburg in 2009, at their first summit, up to the BRICS's long-awaited counterpunch against the Bretton Woods consensus - the IMF and the World Bank - as well as the Japan-dominated (but largely responding to US priorities) Asian Development Bank (ADB).

The BRICS Development Bank - with an initial US$50 billion in capital - will be not only BRICS-oriented, but invest in infrastructure projects and sustainable development on a global scale. The model is the Brazilian BNDES, which supports Brazilian companies investing across Latin America. In a few years, it will reach a financing capacity of up to $350 billion. With extra funding especially from Beijing and Moscow, the new institution could leave the World Bank in the dust. Compare access to real capital savings to US government's printed green paper with no collateral.

And then there's the agreement establishing a $100 billion pool of reserve currencies - the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA), described by Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov as "a kind of mini-IMF". That's a non-Washington consensus mechanism to counterpunch capital flight. For the pool, China will contribute with $41 billion, Brazil, India and Russia with $18 billion each, and South Africa with $5 billion. . . .

FULL TEXT



"1421: The Year China Discovered America?," The Wisdom Fund, January 13, 2003

Mohsin Ali, "Confronting the Quiet Rise of China, India," The Pilot, April 6, 2008

Shanghai, China 1990 Shanghai, China 1990

Shanghai, China 2010 Shanghai, China 2010

Vincent Fernando, "15 Facts About China That Will Blow Your Mind," Business Insider, February. 23, 2010

Stephen M. Walt, "The Myth of American Exceptionalism," Foreign Policy, November 2011

Martin Jacques, "When China Rules the World," September 19, 2012

Kishore Mahbubani, "The Great Convergence: Asia, the West, and the Logic of One World," PublicAffairs (March 4, 2014)

John Pilger, "India Has Become a Dystopia of Extremes," CounterPunch, January 3, 2014

Chris Giles, "China poised to pass US as world's leading economic power this year," ft.com, April 30, 2014

[ . . . estimated to be worth over $400bn.--"Russia signs 30-year gas deal with China," bbc.com, May 21, 2014]

Jack Farchy and Kathrin Hille, "Russian companies prepare to pay for trade in renminbi," ft.com, June 8, 2014

[China has a larger high-speed rail network than the entire European Union or the United States, . . . The train network is set to double by 2020--"China's high-speed rail revolution," bbc.com, July 15, 2014]

[Goodbye visions of an SDR-world currency. As for the USD...--Tyler Durden, "BRICS Announce $100 Billion Reserve To Bypass Fed, Developed World Central Banks," zerohedge.com, July 15, 2014]

Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett, "The Rise of the Petroyuan and the Slow Erosion of Dollar Hegemony," worldfinancialreview.com, July 28, 2014

Tyler Durden, "India Slams US Global Hegemony By Scuttling Global Trade Deal, Puts Future Of WTO In Doubt," zerohedge.com, August 1, 2014

[The message is clear: India is unavailable as a 'counterweight' against China or as a silent partner to 'isolate' Russia.--Melkulangara Bhadrakumar, "Modi Rewrites India's Tryst with Destiny," strategic-culture.org, August 8, 2014]

[There has been a breakdown of faith in the Western economic and political models.--M K Bhadrakumar, "What draws Modi to China," strategic-culture.org, September 16, 2014]

[Since mid-July, nearly every night in the US the price of gold remains steady or drifts higher. This is when the eastern hemisphere markets are open and the market players are busy buying physical gold for which delivery is mandatory. But as regular as clockwork, following the close of the Asian markets, the London and New York paper gold markets open, and the price of gold is immediately taken lower as paper gold contracts flood into the market setting a negative tone for the day's trading.--Paul Craig Roberts and Dave Kranzler, "Rigged Gold Price Distorts Perception of Economic Reality," paulcraigroberts.org, September 22, 2014]

Paul Craig Roberts, "Will Russia and China Hold Their Fire Until War Is the Only Alternative?," paulcraigroberts.org, September 25, 2014

Pankaj Mishra, "The western model is broken," theguardian.com, October 14, 2014

Shanghai, China 2010 APEC, November 10, 2014

[Our Western partners promote respect for the rule of law, democracy and minority opinion within countries, while failing to stand up for the same values in international affairs. This leaves Russia as a pioneer in promoting democracy, justice and rule of international law. A new world order can only be polycentric and should reflect the diversity of cultures and civilisations in today's world.--"Remarks by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at the XXII Assembly of the Council on Foreign and Defence Policy," mid.ru, November 22, 2014]

[Putin is selling Russian oil and gas only for physical gold.--Dmitry Kalinichenko, "Grandmaster Putin's Golden Trap," gold-eagle.com, November 23, 2014]

[Since 2002, after the US unilaterally pulled out of the ABM Treaty, which was absolutely a cornerstone of international security, a strategic balance of forces and stability, the US has been working relentlessly to create a global missile defence system, including in Europe. This poses a threat not only to Russia, but to the world as a whole - precisely due to the possible disruption of this strategic balance of forces. . . .

No one will ever attain military superiority over Russia. . . .

The Eurasian Economic Union will start working in full on January 1, 2015. . . . its fundamental principles . . . are equality, pragmatism and mutual respect, as well as the preservation of national identity and state sovereignty of its member countries.--"Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly," kremlin.ru, December 4, 2014]

[Welcome to the new trans-Eurasia choo-choo train. At over 13,000 kilometers, it will regularly traverse the longest freight train route in the world, 40% farther than the legendary Trans-Siberian Railway. Its cargo will cross China from East to West, then Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Germany, France, and finally Spain.--Pepe Escobar, "Go west, young Han," atimes.com, December 17, 2014]

[China's political mindset about international politics is at a turning point and it could mark the beginning of a new role of China in global affairs.--Francesco Sisci, "Beijing chums up to Washington," atimes.com, January 5, 2015]

Marin Katusa, "The Colder War," February 13, 2015

[According to a new report by the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), China's debt has quadrupled from $7 trillion in 2007 to $28 trillion as of mid-2014, reaching 282 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and higher than the level of the United States. Continuing its current pace of growth would see China's debt reach 400 percent of GDP by 2018, the equivalent of Spain.--"China's Great Wall Of Debt," thediplomat.com, March 4, 2015]

[ . . . protecting the dollar's status is a major reason for US imperial wars.--Michele Brand and Remy Herrera, "Dollar Imperialism, 2015 Edition," counterpunch.org, March 6, 2015]

Tania Branigan, "Support for China-led development bank grows despite US opposition," theguardian.com, March 13, 2015

[The toll the war inflicted on China is still being calculated, but conservative estimates number the dead at 14 million at least (the British Empire and United States each lost over 400,000 during the Second World War, and Russia more than 20 million)--Rana Mitter, "Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937-1945," Mariner Books; Reprint edition (September 2, 2014), p. 5]

AUDIO: "An Imminent Collapse of The US Economy?," moneymappress.com, March 15, 2015

AUDIO (Jeff Brown interview): "While the West Conducts War, The East Conducts Business," thedailycoin.org, March 23, 2015

[In the past, China had a unifying infrastructure enterprise like the Great Wall. In the future it will have a major project of unifying Eurasia via high-speed rail.--Pepe Escobar, "Westward Ho On China's Eurasia BRIC Road," counterpunch.org, March 24, 2015]

Kishore Mahbubani, "What Happens When China Becomes Number One?", April 9, 2015

[The meat of the matter is that Washington's "help" to Islamabad is enveloped in outdated weapons systems, while Beijing is investing in stuff that actually benefits people in Pakistan; think of $15.5 billion in coal, wind, solar and hydro energy projects bound to come online by 2017, or a $44 million optical fiber cable linking China and Pakistan.--Pepe Escobar, "Pakistan enters the New Silk Road," atimes.com, April 24, 2015]

Linda Yueh, "America's place in a multi-polar world," bbc.com, April 27, 2015

"China gets 30% stake in AIIB as bank takes shape," atimes.com, June 29, 2015

[China's economic performance has, since 1949, beaten the pants off of "unfettered, free market" America--Jeff Brown, "The Myth of Chinese Capitalism," greanvillepost.com, August 15, 2015]

Andrew Soergel, "BRICS Bloc Faces Cloudy Future," usnews.com, September 15, 2015

[Having removed the reformist President of Argentina, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, Washington is now disposing of the reformist President of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff.--Paul Craig Roberts, "Washington Launches Its Attack Against BRICS," counterpunch.org, April 26, 2016]

[The tricks long practiced by Washington and its corporate allies have returned - the black propaganda; the manipulation of the media; the bribery and corruption of politicians, generals, police, labor leaders and journalists; the legislative coups detat; the economic strangulation; the discrediting of democratically elected leaders; the criminalization of the left; and the use of death squads to silence and disappear those fighting on behalf of the poor.--Chris Hedges, "The Empire Strikes Back," truthdig.com, October 2, 2016]

[China is proposing through all these corridors - across the upgraded high-speed Trans-Siberian rail route, across Southeast Asia, across Pakistan - whole new layers to the notion of multinational cooperation; political, economic, financial--Pepe Escobar, "The pivot to China," atimes.com, February 11, 2017]

[The entry into the pact this week of India and Pakistan means it now covers roughly half of humanity.--Seema Sengupta, "Bigger Shanghai Cooperation Organization may be game-changer," atimes.com, June 5, 2017]

Ray McGovern, "Russia-China Tandem Shifts Global Power," antiwar.com, July 4, 2017

[the Indian state is being co-opted into a CIA-Pentagon-Wall Street nexus of global domination by surrendering financial sovereignty and curtailing the individual freedoms of Indian citizens.--Colin Todhunter, "Indian Independence: Forged in Washington?," counterpunch.org, July 31, 2017]

Nafeez Ahmed, "China faces looming energy crisis, warns state-funded study," medium.com, October 5, 2017

Fareed Zakaria, "While we obsess over Trump, China is making history," washingtonpost.com, October 25, 2017

Wang Xueying, "China has built more than 800,000 highway bridges," cgtn.com, November 6, 2017

Zhang Weiwei

Good governance versus bad governance is a much better political paradigm than democracy versus autocracy.--Zhang Weiwei, "What is the ultimate test of a political system?," cgtn.com, March 15, 2018

Peter Wong, "China's four-decade route to the world's No 1 economy," cgtn.com, March 31, 2018

Jim O'Neill, "Are the BRICs still relevant to understand today's world?," consortiumnews.com, February 5, 2019

"The Asian World Order is Coming," YouTube, February 19, 2019

"China's Mega Projects: Transportation," CGTN, March 31, 2019

"China's Mega Projects: Manufacturing," CGTN, April 1, 2019

Pepe Escobar, "The Unipolar Moment is Over," consortiumnews.com, June 10, 2019

Ellen Brown, "The American Dream Is Alive and Well -- in China," consortiumnews.com, June 13, 2019

Kerry Brown, "China's rise: The three key things everyone needs to know," TEDx, June 26 2019

"Hello world, this is China," CGTN, November 6, 2019

A Global Economic Collapse By 2025? Wealthion, April 1, 2022

Joseph Solis-Mullen, "A Few Thousand Years of Chinese Foreign Policy," libertarianinstitute.org, May 23, 2023

The BRICS Bloc's Expansion: Saudi Arabia To Join In 2023, Lena Petrova, May 28, 2023

Why the US is losing the tech war with China? Thinker's Forum, December 5, 2023

back button