BRICS is attracting Southeast Asian countries, with Thailand
and Malaysia being the latest to express their interest in joining the
bloc.
Last month, Thailand submitted a membership request,
while Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said in an interview
with Chinese news portal Guancha that his country would soon begin formal
procedures.
“Being a member of BRICS would open up trade and investment
opportunities, so the question is ‘why not?'” Piti Srisangam, the executive
director of the ASEAN Foundation, told DW.
“The bloc has members from all over the world, but none from
Southeast Asia yet,” he added.
According to James Chin, a professor of Asian Studies at the
University of Tasmania, “both Thailand and Malaysia are seen as middle powers.”
“It’s better for them to join groups like BRICS so that they
will have a larger voice in the international arena. But the major benefit will
be trade,” he added.
Last year, BRICS — an acronym that was originally used
to refer to Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South
Africa — decided to expand its membership, inviting Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran,
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to join the bloc.
The name for the expanded group has not yet been officially
announced, but it could be called “BRICS Plus”.
Combined, its members account for about 45% of the world population
— around 3.5 billion people.
Their economies are worth around US$30 trillion (€28
trillion) — about 28% of the global economy, according to World Bank
data.
The bloc “can help Malaysia’s digital economy grow faster by
allowing it to integrate with countries that have strong digital
markets and also take advantage of best practices from other members,”
Rahul Mishra, associate professor at the Center for Indo-Pacific Studies at
Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, told DW.
“Thailand would also be able to draw investments in
important industries including services, manufacturing, and agriculture,” he
added.
Chin believes the trade ties that Malaysia and Thailand
already have with China have influenced their decisions to join BRICS.
China has been Malaysia’s largest trading partner for the
past 15 years and Thailand’s biggest for 11 years, according to official data.
Both these Southeast Asian nations becoming BRICS members
“will enhance their relationship with China,” Chin told DW.
Last month, Thai Foreign Minister Maris Sangiampongsa
insisted that Bangkok did not view joining BRICS as an act of “choosing
sides,” or as a way to counterbalance any other bloc.
“Thailand is unique in that we are friends with every
country and enemies to none. We can act as a bridge between developing
countries and BRICS members,” Maris said.
Apart from BRICS, Thailand has also applied to join
the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD), which has 38 mostly Western members.
“Small and middle powers do not have many options,” Piti
said. “What Thailand is doing is a balancing act — one foot with the
Western liberal democracy and the other foot with the emerging economies.”
In Malaysia, public sentiment is currently more in favor of
China, the world’s second-largest economy after the United States, according
to a recent survey by the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, a Singaporean think
tank.
Nearly three-quarters of the survey’s respondents said ASEAN
should favor China over the US if the bloc were forced to align with one of the
two rival superpowers.
In June, during the three-day visit of Chinese Premier Li
Qiang to Malaysia, Anwar criticized “the incessant propaganda that we
should cast aspersions and fear the dominance of China economically,
militarily, technologically.”
“We do not. We in Malaysia, having a neutral stance, have
the resolve to work with all countries and with China,” he added.
Malaysia and Thailand are not the only countries in
Southeast Asia interested in joining BRICS.
In May, Pham Thu Hang, Vietnam’s Foreign Ministry
spokesperson, told a press briefing in Hanoi that “like many countries around
the world, we are closely monitoring the process of BRICS membership
expansion.”
Mishra believes Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia “could be the
potential applicants” as they already have good ties with China, India, and
Russia — all key players in BRICS.
“For Vietnam, which has been registering significant
investments, it would be a good opportunity to further boost its trade beyond
their traditional markets into the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa,” he
added.
Ahead of the BRICS summit in South Africa last year, there
had been speculation that Indonesia — the only G20 country in Southeast Asia
that hopes to complete the accession process with the OECD within three years —
could become a BRICS member.
But ultimately, Indonesian President Joko Widodo told the
public that his government had decided not to submit a letter of
interest. Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said at a press conference
in January that Jakarta was still weighing the pros and cons of the BRICS
membership.
