Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s recent four-day visit to Beijing and Tianjin was more than just a show of commitment to global engagement and to secure more trade and investment deals for Malaysia
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s recent four-day visit to Beijing and Tianjin was more than just a show of commitment to global engagement and to secure more trade and investment deals for Malaysia.
More significantly, it was about providing a vision to the new world order. Back home, Anwar emphasised the need to build our own historical narrative by way of critique, reinterpreting and analysing the historical records as a means to address the issue of Eurocentrism.
Clearly, he extended this agenda globally during the visit, where Anwar envisioned that the next world order would be written in Asian ink.
Anwar conceptualised the idea of sovereign interdependence and the importance for each country to remain autonomous while, at the same time, being able to engage peacefully and justly in matters of common interest, including trade and investment.
One key takeaway of Anwar’s visit was the endorsement of Chinese President Xi Jinping to expedite Malaysia’s full membership in the BRICS bloc. BRICS, the acronym of five countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), is a group which is now seen as an important force to counterbalance Western economic dominance.
BRICS is currently made up of 11 member countries and 10 partner countries, which include Malaysia.
The 11-member nations of the BRICS bloc represent 40 per cent of the world’s economy and almost half of the global population. BRICS also controls a significant portion of the world’s energy supply and is a leader in solar power generation.
Malaysia, as the chair of Asean, is making the right move towards BRICS at a time when the world is witnessing the uncertain prospect of the global economy and international trade as a result of the imposition of unnecessary, unpredictable, and unilateral tariffs by the US administration on its trade partners worldwide.
Anwar has made a strong case for closer BRICS-Asean ties.
This is about putting the concept of sovereign interdependence into action, and BRICS will give Malaysia a perfect platform to script the new global order further in this momentous moment of global transition.
Certainly, by becoming a member, Malaysia will have the ability to improve its trade and investment linkages further with the other BRICS member countries. During the 17th BRICS Summit in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, the idea of promoting multipolarity, which is grounded in multilateralism, gained traction.
Three crucial issues were the focus of the summit — promoting free trade, pushing for peace, and saving the environment. These are issues that have resonated well with Malaysia as well as Asean itself.
During his speech at the Summit, Anwar championed the idea of a fair and just global order and the need for BRICS to boost its intra-trade activities.
Anwar asserted that developing countries should break away from the dependency mentality and the core-periphery setting of the post-colonial history. He criticised the eurocentric nature of today’s key institutional institutions and global governance structures, such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, a message that he reiterated during his visit to China, too.
As a member of the BRICS bloc, Malaysia can participate more meaningfully in many aspects of economic reforms, including on climate change.
One important feature here is financing. With the New Development Bank (NDB), Malaysia, by becoming a member, can participate meaningfully in terms of investment financing not just in the area of clean energy, but also in other areas of focus, such as infrastructure development and digital economy.
BRICS also has an advanced multilateral payment platform and has developed its own fintech systems. Malaysia has now joined China’s Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) as an alternative to the US-led SWIFT network.
Full membership of BRICS will allow Malaysia to access an advanced multilateral payments platform under the NDB, so that gradually we will be less dependent on the US dollar in our trade and financial transactions internationally.
The world now stands at a crucial moment which requires a rethinking of the global economic order. In this sense, the Asian input is vital. Astute leadership, together with global cooperation and the new mechanism in conducting the new world order, are indeed paramount.
Dr Irwan Shah Zainal Abidin is an Associate Professor and Senior Associate Fellow at the Economic and Financial Policy Institute (ECOFI), Universiti Utara Malaysia.
The New Straits Times
