With three of the four original BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) struggling economically, and the expanded group looking more and more like Beijing’s geopolitical tool, a journalist calls for recognition of South and Southeast Asia’s major emerging markets as the next generation of economic powerhouses.
The acronym BRIC took hold early in the twenty-first century, after Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neill coined the term in a 2001 report (Building Better Global Economic BRICs) spotlighting four large emerging markets—Brazil, Russia, India, and China—as future drivers of global economic growth. O’Neill noted that the four countries’ 8% share of the world economy translated into 23.3% of global GDP at purchasing power parity, and he predicted that their economic weight and impact would grow over the next 10 years. Accordingly, he argued for an…
