China's 'four pioneers' lead BRICS into its 3rd 'golden decade'

Editor's note: Liu Xu is a research fellow at the National Academy of Development and Strategy at Renmin University of China.

The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

China called for BRICS countries to be pioneers in advancing innovation-driven development, upholding peace and stability, facilitating mutual learning between civilizations, as well as reforming and improving global governance, during the18th BRICS Summit that concluded successfully in New Delhi on Sunday.

Roles of "four pioneers" are not only a profound summary of the development experience of BRICS cooperation over the past 20 years, but also, grounded in the context of accelerating changes unseen in a century and the continued growth of Global South forces.

They point out the way forward for the high-quality development of "greater BRICS" cooperation.

The "four pioneers" constitute a coherent organic whole: innovation is the driving force for development, peace is an important prerequisite, mutual learning among civilizations is the social foundation and global governance is the institutional safeguard.

To be pioneers in advancing innovation-driven development, BRICS countries should seize the opportunities of new scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation, deepen collaboration in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), uphold open-source and openness in innovation, cooperation and sharing and promote the upgrading of practical cooperation.

China has proposed that the BRICS cooperation enables a new type of industrialization with AI, promote the establishment of a World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization and the building of an International Artificial Intelligence Application Cooperation Center, welcoming the active participation of all BRICS parties.

This fully demonstrates that BRICS is, by no means, a closed and exclusionary small circle, but an open cooperation platform that embraces technological change and jointly builds industrial and supply chains.

By contrast, "decoupling" and the "small yards, high fences" approach run counter to the trend of the times and will ultimately lead nowhere.

To be pioneers in upholding peace and stability, it is necessary to adhere to the vision of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security, abandon the "Cold War mentality" and bloc confrontation, respect the sovereignty of all countries, refrain from interfering in other countries' internal affairs, and constructively participate in mediation of hot issues.