Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates joined BRICS in January and attended the just-concluded summit of the grouping in Kazan, Russia, as full members. As a grouping of emerging market economies and developing countries, BRICS has been trying to make more contributions to global development and peace, while making efforts to reform the global governance system to make it fairer and truly representative.

Since its meeting in 2006, the grouping has evolved from a concept into reality, becoming a key force promoting a multipolar world order. Accordingly, one of the main topics on the agenda of the Kazan summit was collaboration between BRICS member states and the Global South in order to build a better world marked by equality and justice.

Just as President Xi Jinping said in his important speech at the "BRICS Plus" leaders' dialogue in Kazan, Russia, on Oct 24, the collective rise of the Global South is a distinctive feature of the great transformation across the world. Global South countries marching together toward modernization is monumental in world history and unprecedented in human civilization.

The Kazan summit was important for several reasons. First, after its enlargement, BRICS has become a more important platform for the Global South to voice its concerns and needs, a platform that will endeavor to get the Global South its rightful due. This has attracted many emerging economies and developing countries to seek BRICS' membership.

Second, Russia, which hosted the just-concluded summit, is under severe economic and financial sanctions from Western powers, prompting many to ask how Russia can promote BRICS' financial and monetary cooperation with other countries to not only ease its economic stress but also help the developing world to boost its development.

BRICS is not a political bloc or military alliance. It is a cooperative platform for emerging economies and developing countries. And it is through this platform that BRICS will help Russia ease its economic constraints and the developing countries boost their development.

The 2008 global financial crisis pushed the US and many other developed economies into recession. On the other hand, emerging economies, including China, by overcoming the effects of the financial crisis, became the major engines of global growth. While the share of the developed economies, represented by the G7, decreased in the global economy, the economic center of the world began shifting from the Global North to the Global South.

The BRICS cooperation platform has helped emerging economies gain prominence. The platform is devoted to promoting development and peace, as well as helping developing countries pursue modernization by deepening their trade and industrial cooperation. But modernization is both a common mission and challenge for countries, with development being their shared task and goal.

As modernization advances around the world and developing countries pursue modernization, the traditional center-periphery structure of countries is loosening and developing countries are gaining greater autonomy. The emerging economies and developing countries are moving from the fringes to the center of the global economic governance system.

BRICS aims to reform the global economic governance system to make it fairer, more just and truly representative, rather than building a new economic governance system. Therefore, it is inappropriate to compare BRICS with the G7, which wants to consolidate its hold on not only the global economic governance system but also the overall global governance system to serve its own interests.

The BRICS platform is open and inclusive. Although BRICS member states have differences, they seek common ground so that BRICS-led cooperation becomes a model for the rest of the world. While developed countries are more homogeneous in terms of their political and economic systems, BRICS member states, despite being diverse, are united in their common goal of achieving socioeconomic development and modernization. Respecting and embracing diversity is a key feature of BRICS' cooperation and a driving force of the grouping's growth.

BRICS will continue promoting a multipolar world order, offering new choices for Global South countries and injecting fresh vitality into the reform of the world order.

The author is a professor at the School of International Relations, Sun Yat-sen University.

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