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Groups, alignments, relationships and China

28th August 2015

By: Keith Campbell

Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

  

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Have you heard of Mikta? No, me neither – until very recently. (If you had heard of Mikta, congratulations! You have been keeping a sharp eye on international developments.) Mikta is, of course, an acronym: it stands for Mexico, Indonesia, the Republic of (South) Korea, Turkey and Australia. It was created in September 2013. In the words of Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) website, Mikta “is a consultative forum based on shared values and interests. It is a flexible and informal platform, aimed at advancing the common interests of the international community”.

It seems a pretty safe bet that the creation of Mikta was inspired by the creation of the Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) group. However, Mikta does have two advantages over Brics – all its members are democracies and, in economic terms, they form a more balanced group, the Mikta member countries being the 12th-, 14th-, 15th-, 16th- and 17th-largest economies in the world respectively (according to the DFAT). None of the Mikta states are dominant in their regions but all are important. All are sufficiently large enough to have influence (although not power) at global level.

The creation of Mikta may also be a reaction to Brics. These countries would have made obvious candidates for membership of an expanded Brics, but they have gone their own way, and have left few really credible potential future partners for Brics, should the group ever seek to enlarge itself.

For those, by the way, that would object that Australia is a Western country and so would not have been a suitable candidate for Brics, well, so is Brazil. Brazilians see themselves as Westerners and the country, like Australia, South Korea and Turkey, is a treaty ally of the US. South-south alignments (outside South America itself) have little popular support in Brazil and are basically an ideological affectation of the Workers Party (PT is the Portuguese abbreviation), to which current President Dilma Rousseff and her predecessor Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva belong. (I cannot say PT government because the PT never had a majority in the Brazilian Congress and had to form a coalition with other parties; nevertheless, the PT controlled foreign policy.) The truth of this was clearly demonstrated quite recently. President Rousseff’s visit to US President Barack Obama in Washington in June was seen, in Brazil, as much more important for her (very poor) domestic image than her attendance at the seventh Brics summit, in Ufa, Russia, in July.

Interestingly, Mikta is led by the member countries’ Foreign Ministers, unlike Brics, which is led by the members’ heads of State and government. This means that Mikta, unlike Brics, is not burdened by the need to hold summits, with all their concomitant paraphernalia and costs, not least the obligatory summit declarations. Now, the first Brics summit declaration was big news and closely read. These days, they get little attention and are quickly forgotten, so much has the world changed since the Brics alignment was launched. Part of that change has been the coming- off-the-rails of some of the Brics countries’ economies, leading to the quip that the group’s name should be spelt brICs. As pointed out in a previous column, even the formal inauguration of what was once seen as the ground-breaking New Development, or Brics, Bank has been overshadowed by the launch of the significantly larger Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). That the AIIB is a Chinese initiative rather suggests where Beijing’s priorities really lie.

On top of everything else, the South African government, oddly, is risking undercutting popular support for Brics in this country. Minister in the Presidency Jeff Radebe’s recent citing of Brics as one of the reasons South Africa could not raise tariffs on Chinese steel imports was truly bizarre. Brics is not a trade bloc. If raising tariffs on Chinese steel would violate South Africa’s international trade obligations, under the World Trade Organisation (WTO), fine – just say so. But leave Brics out of it. All Radebe’s argument does is give the impression that, as many South Africans will see it, government cares more about President Jacob Zuma being able to grandstand at international summits than about South African steel companies having to downsize (or even go under), throwing hundreds, if not thousands, of South Africans out of work.

Assuming South Africa has grounds, under WTO rules, to invoke antidumping or antisubsidy tariffs against Chinese steel (or any other product, for that matter), Brics does not serve to prevent such actions being taken. As Donald Mackay recently pointed out in Business Day, Brazil, India and Russia all initiated such actions against China during the 2010 to 2014 period.

Yet again, the South African government seems utterly mesmerised by China, as with the woeful cases of preventing the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, from making private visits to South Africa, even though he makes private visits to major Chinese trading partners all the time, without there being any consequences (its official visits Beijing can’t abide) – so far this year, he’s been to Australia, Denmark, Japan, Switzerland, the UK and the US and he is scheduled for further visits to the UK and the US before the end of this year and he is, of course, based in India – Pretoria seems, well, afraid of Beijing.

But good, mutually prosperous – indeed friendly – relations between South Africa and China are not dependent upon Pretoria (pardon the pun) kowtowing to Beijing. South Africa, as long as it is merely exercising its rights within the WTO and adhering to the rules of the WTO, can impose antidumping or antisubsidy duties on Chinese products, and global experience shows that China will not retaliate. And while the Dalai Lama’s private visits may irritate Beijing, experience also shows that it doesn’t retaliate for them either, as long as no government officials hold meetings with him. The once-exciting initiative that is Brics is in enough trouble at the moment without Pretoria turning it into a scapegoat for its own weaknesses.

Edited by Martin Zhuwakinyu
Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

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