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The BRICS5 economic entity has just expanded its membership, which is a major international event. BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) is an easy-to-remember and meaningful word arranged according to the first letter of the five nations’ English names. BRICS is pronounced the same way as bricks. The Five nations joined solidly together like bricks in one economic entity to work in trade, investment, and financial business, which is what BRICS was created for. Therefore, the Chinese translation for BRICS as 金磚（gold bricks）is even more effective in conveying its organizational meaning. The five countries are solid like bricks but more like gold bricks with value (the total GDP of the five countries exceeds a quarter of the world GDP, and their population exceeds 40% of the world population). The establishment of the BRICS has the purpose of mutual assistance somewhat like the G7. The G7 (the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan) together account for nearly 40% of the world's GDP and 10% of the world's  population. Both BRICS5 and G7 have the prime number of member states (5 and 7 respectively). This may be just a coincidence, but prime numbers often occurred to describe international affairs such as the famous Three Kingdoms in Chinese history and the infamous Seven Imperialists Invaded Beijing. When the United States was the only superpower in the world, the world was a unipolar world (G1); when the United States and the Soviet Union confronted each other, the world was a bipolar world (G2). Today, the United States is competing with China and Russia, and the world has a tripolar appearance (G3 confrontation). However, the United States has many allies and puts great pressure on China and Russia.

The United States is the world's largest economy and controls the global trade remittance mechanism, SWIFT. The U.S. can affect the world economy and impose sanctions against other countries because the U.S. dollar was used as the main currency for settling trades, especially for oil, energy, and food transactions. Coupled with the fact that the U.S. has a strong military force, a large military industry, and many military alliances with developed countries, the U.S. has clout in the world's political and economic sphere. The U.S. naturally occupies a dominant position in the G7 organization and has great influence on the global economy. The emergence of the BRICS organization means that the developing countries desire to seek more independence (away from G7). Let's compare the statistics of the two organizations, we can then infer the significance and future trends of the BRICS’ membership expansion. The G7 has a total population of 750+ million (10% of the world), a geographical area of ​​20+ million square kilometers (15% of the world), a GDP of $33.94 trillion (39% of the world's) and a per capita GDP of $43,108. In contrast, the BRICS5 countries (金磚五國) have a total population of 3.21 billion (41.5% of the world), an area of ​​39.7+ million square kilometers (26.7% of the world), a GDP of $28.2 trillion (26.6% of the world) and per capita GDP about $7050 but fast-rising (2020 data: China $10525, Russia $10181, Brazil $6970, South Africa $5661, and India $1913). Based on this comparison and the prediction of future growth trends, the BRICS countries will definitely be catching up to or even surpassing the G7.

In nature, prime numbers occur naturally in the biological world, such as the five fingers and five toes in human beings (the starfish has five pointed angles), plants also prefer three, five and seven petals in leaves (The sunflower has 23 petals). Originally, there were only four countries without South Africa in BRIC. Regardless of whether the five countries were deliberately and rationally selected for BRICS formation, their performance after becoming BRICS5 is commendable. Even under the impact of the corona virus pandemic, its performance compared with BRIC or G7 is impressive. Today, forty countries have expressed their desire to join BRICS, which can be viewed as an endorsement of its success. At its 15th summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, the BRICS5 decided to expand its membership with six countries, Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, to become BRICS11. Eleven is a prime number, it not only can avoid voting deadlock, but it is also the smallest number greater than doubling five. Therefore, BRICS11 can be said to be the double growth of BRICS5. We expect it to continue performing better than G7. It does not need to have just the largest economies in the world (the GDP of the G7 members all ranked within the top ten in the world) to help each other, the world economy, and the poorer economies. The GDP world rankings of BRICS5 are 2, 5, 10, 11 and 39 (four prime numbers), BRICS11 added Saudi Arabia 18, Argentina 23, UAE 33, Egypt 41, Iran 43, and Ethiopia 59 (also four prime numbers). BRICS must have a better model and open mind to help the poorer economies. If BRICS11 can perform well in mutual help and helping poorer developing countries, then it can consider BRICS23 next (11x2+1=23, a prime number) for its next double-up expansion. The author will continue to track the performance of the BRICS11, and it will not be difficult to guess which countries may be the new twelve BRICS member countries (GDP ranking in prime number positions may be a mysterious hint! )

As for how BRICS11 will affect the G7 rules, including the use of local currency (reducing US dollar) for trade and investment, and strengthening the development and use of non-SWIFT systems, it will be a natural evolution, because military intervention cannot stop the natural course of economic development. It can only destroy everyone, and in the end, everyone can only sit down and trade their debts and their own bargaining chips. There may be a possibility of a merger between the BRICS and the G7, or a transfer of membership. India (5) is said to be likely to transfer out depending on its national leader. The following thirteen countries, France (7), Netherlands (17), New Zealand (52), Kazakhstan (53), Morocco (61), Angola (67), Bulgaria (71), Uzbekistan (73), Sri Lanka (83), Ghana (89), Libya (97), Nepal (101), and Nicaragua (131) are likely to join in. Among the thirteen countries, except for New Zealand (52), their GDP rankings are all prime numbers. Is this a coincidence? Let's wait and see!




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The U.S. and China are the two largest economies in the world, their mutual dependence cannot be ignored simply because of the human interactions between the 330 million Americans and the 1.4 billion Chinese citizens. The interactions include blood relationships, in-law relationships as well as other relations bounded by education (school-mates), business (trading partners and custom-clients), professional contacts (colleagues, associates, even including politicians who represent civil and cultural groups). Yet today the U.S. government is practicing a Cold War mentality against China adopting an economic sanction policy in cohorts with its allies. The policy is word-smithed from de-coupling to de-risking, in reality, it is an all-out economic war with the intention to crush China’s economic rise.
 
Driven by the ideology legacy (Communism is evil and the Western Liberal Capitalism based democracy is supreme), China was on the evil list next to the Soviet communist bloc despite China’s independence from the Soviet Union and its pursuit of economic development in its own way. Russia was the leader of the Soviet Union primarily practicing real goods economy (manufacturing and production) whereas the U.S. led Western world was practicing a capitalistic economy (Capital creates industries, farms, and products). One key difference can be illustrated by the following example. The Soviet Russia would aid or loan its 50 horse-power tractors and machines to others like China. China would pay back the debt with agricultural products. Whereas the U.S. would aid or loan capitals to Germany, France and Japan for economic development. Capital is far more liquid (flexible) for recipients to to develop their preferred profitable industries. (Germany, France and Japan all quickly developed their industries post-WW II) Hence the capitalist economic development model is proven to be efficient, although capital tends to be concentrated in a few hands,
 
China started out as a communist country (in the 1950’s) and received aid from the Soviet, but its economic development was not so smooth. Following the example cited above, 50 horse-power tractors may be great for Russia or Ukraine, but they are not too practical on the Chinese small farms and tiered mountain-side farmland. In 1962, China parted its way from the Soviet Union because of their differences in interpretation of Marxism and the extreme poverty in China. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) experimented and learned from many economic development models in history as well as from contemporary cases. China had made mistakes over nearly two decades until the late 1970’s when Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping implemented a massive reform program taking advantage of the U.S. strategy of opening up to China to rival with the Soviet Union. China indeed learned and reformed from 1979 to 2009 and became the world’s second largest economy in 2010. China embraced capitalism but massaged it with socialism under its largely state-driven enterprise systems with rigorous planning and control. China continued her rapid growth for another decade until the COVID Pandemic hit the world.
 
Over the 40 years, the U.S. succeeded in winning the Cold War against the Soviet Union whose economy collapsed and the union disintegrated in 1991. The U.S. became the most powerful nation in the world believing in its supremacy owing to its governing system (Liberal Capitalistic Democracy). However, the rapid rise of China was casting doubt on the American supremacy notion. China’s GDP was growing three times faster than that of the U.S. China now is the world's largest purchasing power enjoying the status of being the number one trading partner with over 120 countries. China has become 'the world manufacturer'. Despite the U.S. effort to suppressing China’s economic rise, China has single-handedly built a space station while the one U.S.-Russia collaborated launching is about to retire. China succeeded in lifting its billion citizens out of poverty, having the best public transportation infrastructure in the world, and using its own GPS system with communication capability. Understandably, the U.S. felt uneasy, but losing the Olympic spirit to compete and applying all tricks to destroy a strong competitor with the possibility of mutual destruction is an insane strategy..
 
In the U.S. many talks predicting China’s inevitable demise can be found, but sadly they are mainly based on superficial arguments: Our Liberal capitalistic democracy is supreme and China’s system will eventually collapse. Very little deep analysis was done other than citing a few economic data of suspicious accuracy, for example, GDP prediction, youth unemployment rate, real estate vacancies, etc. China is a big country with a sophisticated culture capable of dealing with complex problems and crises. On August 20, 2023, The Wall Street Journal published an article, entitled, “China’s 40-year Boom Is Over, What Comes Next?”, authored by Lingling Wei and Stella Yifan Xie. As if the paper's content did not match the title enough or politically correct enough, there is a follow-up commentary on this paper appeared anonymously in Wordtune Read, which further emphasized a perilous outlook for China’s economy. Wordtune Read cited an IMF estimate of China’s GDP growth rate going down to 4%, world demand for Chinese goods ebbing, the housing bubble popped and borrowing unsustainable. Wei and Xie hinted that China’s economy might follow a Japan-like slowdown and interpreted that China’s boom was the result of an excessive investment in infrastructure (overbuilt airports and highways) but they ended their article with Xi’s resolve to double-down “the control” to pump up the economy, whereas the commentary article gave a far more gloomy future for China.
 
This author cannot help but worry that the baseless anti-China sentiment will lead the U.S. to a disastrous path. To be fair, we must leave the legacy of ideology and examine China’s failures and 40-year boom based on economic principles and accurate data. China did make mistakes, such as forcefully organizing farm villages into communes to receive the rationed Russian tractors, engaged in the Korea and Vietnam wars sacrificing China’s economic development for political objectives, and Isolated itself from the Western world, especially its capital market, impeding China’s economic development and nation building. Then came the U.S. policy changes, the U.S. adopted the 'allying China against the Soviet Union strategy' (open to China) and China initiated a broad-ranged reform program (embracing the West) and selectively adopted capitalism, which started China’s 40-year boom. The details of China’s rapid rise are complex, but the principles are easily understandable. The Chinese leaders understood deeply the Chinese history and Chinese people’s nature, culture, and desire. They simply unleashed the Chinese people’s conservative and disciplined respect for history, experience, education (learning, experiments and innovation), diligence, sacrifice and reward relationship, and respect and mandate of government performance.
 
The CCP initiated a rigorous economic development process, planned, reviewed, and measured every five years. China examined the 'success and failure' economic development cases (in the West and in the entire world history) to select and adopt the best suitable and avoid the worst harmful models. Their daring ‘learn while you do and do while you learn’ approach had made their double-digit economic growth possible. However, they have paid prices as well such as pollution and environmental damages. China’s infrastructure investment may not satisfy the Western liberal capitalist’s return on investment (ROI) expectation, but its impact as a locomotive for China’s economic development is undeniable. Furthermore, China’s Belt and Road Initiative program (BRI) for promoting global economic development (China’s sacrifice and early investment) will have a long-term dividend. The U.S. and EU have certainly failed in such long-term investment. A win-win program like BRI, originated from China’s ancient Silk Road idea, but its implementation has definitely incorporated many good ideas not only from the Silk Road but also from post-WW II Marshall
Plan and more current World Bank projects. The BRI will be a locomotive for world economic development, any badmouthing on the program is just sour-grapes rhetoric.
 
The so called double-down decision by the CCP did not appear to be a decision out of ideological argument. China has gained tremendous growth (and experience) from its urbanization program, supported by its national infrastructure investment. Urbanization came with a cost, shifting productive labor from countries to cities creating a big wealth gap between cities and villages. To further pull China up above the poverty line into the middle class, China must rein in the liberal capitalist development process (which created urban real estate overbuilt problems) and divert attention and capital to China’s vast rural areas. China has already initiated programs such as green energy, environmental protection, and population balancing (incentives and jobs for city folks to move to the countryside). China may have a few bad economic data due to COVID-19, but China is by far the best nation in pandemic management. To the China doomsday sayers, this author would advise that we need to be humble to admit the problems associated with liberal capitalism and cooperate with China, the fastest train in world economic development, to reap a win-win outcome.
 
Ifay Chang. Ph.D., Inventor, Author, TV Game Show Host and Columnist (www.us-chinaforum.org) as well as serving as Trustee, Somers Central School District.