Customs data shows that from January to May this year, east China's Qingdao port has completed a total of 830,000 TEUs to BRICS countries, a year-on-year increase of 12 percent. (PHOTO: XINHUA)

By Staff Reporters

Five years ago, the BRICS Xiamen Summit ushered in the second "golden decade" of BRICS cooperation. This year, the member states gathered again in China to foster high-quality partnerships and pool their strength for global development.

As a vital BRICS member, China has been contributing to global development for long time. In 2017, China was adamant that "BRICS is not a talking shop, but a task force that gets things done." Over the past five years, the country has organized a variety of BRICS Plus events in such areas as vaccine research and development, scientific and technological innovation, people-to-people exchanges and sustainable development.

Introduced to strengthen dialogue and cooperation between BRICS countries and other emerging economies and developing countries, BRICS Plus promotes the establishment of broader partnerships, and facilitates common development and prosperity on a larger scale, said Financial Express.

Since 2006, BRICS countries have proved to be a constructive force in modernizing economies and reallocating aid resources to more deserving countries, according to Cavince Adhere, a Kenya-based international relations scholar.

Over the past sixteen years, the BRICS bloc has set up a series of cooperation mechanisms including the NDB, the Contingent Reserve Arrangement, the BRICS Business Council and the BRICS Partnership on New Industrial Revolution Innovation Center.

The BRICS Plus is broadly punted under China's chairmanship in 2022.

The BRICS Vaccine Research and Development Center was launched in March and an agreement to establish an early warning system for large-scale pandemics was approved by BRICS health ministers in May.

Earlier this month, BRICS economic and trade ministers pledged to deepen cooperation in fields including the digital economy, trade investment and sustainable development. Deepened cooperation has also been strengthened in areas such as aerospace, information and communications, environment, new energy, and biotechnology.

Vladimir Petrovskiy, chief research fellow at the Institute of Far Eastern Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, said China's BRICS chairmanship in 2022 creates a favorable basis for the development of the BRICS Plus format, while Chinese representatives have already stated that they are considering the development of the BRICS Plus concept in the context of interaction, including regional integration associations of the countries of the Global South.

Yersultan Zhanseitov, senior researcher on China from Kazakhstan, believes that the BRICS Plus, "Serves as an alternative form of interaction for developing countries," and that other large economies and developing countries will also put forward their proposals, while their opinions will be taken into account.