Spotlight: Xi's Goa trip expected to bring vitality to BRICS cooperation

Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to bring confidence and vitality to partnership within the bloc of emerging economies and enable it to contribute more to global growth and economic governance when he attends the 8th BRICS summit in India on Saturday and Sunday.

The summit held in the western Indian port of Goa is drawing a lot of attention from across the world amid increasing uncertainties about global economic recovery and the rising anti-globalization sentiment in Western countries.

Highlighting boosting economic growth, improving global governance and pushing BRICS (an association that groups the five major emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) cooperation, the Goa summit is widely expected to produce common solutions that are effective and inclusive, as its theme stipulates.

To this end, China, the bloc's constant supporter and active player, is expected to be of great help by enhancing confidence in deepening partnership within the bloc and providing fresh impetus to the cooperation between developing countries.

The consensus reached during the September summit of Group of 20 (G20) major economies in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou is in particular expected to boost the bloc's participation in global economic governance. The bloc has grown rapidly over the past decade to become a multi-level forum for dialogue and cooperation that covers multiple fields.

The sound operation of its New Development Bank and the progress made in setting up the bank's emergency reserve arrangements have partly demonstrated the bloc's vitality and promising future.

Although some say that new difficulties and challenges would make BRICS economies vulnerable, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has earlier this month revised up growth expectations for this year in emerging markets and developing economies.

Emerging economies such as China and India have maintained faster growth, and the developing economies will contribute over 75 percent of global growth this and next year, remaining an important engine of the global economy, IMF chief Christine Lagarde said.

President Xi will attend the BRICS summit and bilateral meetings on its sidelines in a span of two days. The leaders are also scheduled to engage in dialogue with counterparts from members of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation to boost regional cooperation.

Xi's trip to India is scheduled after he wraps up his state visits to Cambodia and Bangladesh.

"People are pinning high hopes on the Goa summit, expecting to see how it will pool forces to implement and expand results of the G20 Hangzhou summit on global governance and innovative growth, as well as to materialize and deepen the BRICS cooperation," said Zhu Jiejin, deputy director with the Center for BRICS Studies at China's Fudan University. Endi