BiC

In the last decade, the BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India, and China—emerged as important, new economic forces. The world’s leading powers have had to blend these four emerging economies in with the Atlantic-dominated, economic “Group of 7” (U.S., Japan, Germany, France, U.K., Italy, Canada). Recognizing the BRIC countries—adding them to a new “Group of 20”—helped draw them into the existing world order.

OK, but. . .

Russia an “emerging economic power”?? The U.S.S.R. was a superpower dominating the post-war period. Part of its strength came from its natural resources, including petroleum—oil and natural gas aren’t a new part of the Russian power calculus. Furthermore, Russia is a European-origin power like 6 of the “Group of 7,” which in 1997 in fact became the “Group of 8” or “G8” when the “G7” added Russia as a member. The “G8” still exists today; it still includes Russia but not Brazil, India, or China.

Russia (like China) also has been one of the 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council since the UN’s founding in 1945. Russia’s not new. It’s not emerging, like Security Council non-permanent members India and Brazil. Russia’s European, in fact the biggest European power.

Take out Russia, and focus on three emerging economies, all non-European, all still climbing out of poverty, all optimistic with bright futures ahead. We talk of the BiC powers, three nations that will shape our current century.

Brazil

Half the people in South America live in Brazil. It’s home to the Amazon rainforest, the source of 20% of the earth’s oxygen and 20% of its river water. It also harbors other abundant natural resources, including offshore petroleum. In per-capita income, Brazil’s the richest of the BiCs. While Brazil’s society exhibits a deep gulf between rich and poor, a smaller share of its population lives in poverty than in either India or China.

From the Los Angeles Times:

"You feel like it's the country of the future because everything is on the rise," said L.A.-based entertainment marketing consultant Isaac Joseph. "The Olympics may help pull the country together, and everything is moving forward in this fast and exciting way. Between the ethanol, nature reserves, culture and people -- it's really a hub of all things that are totally happening."

Regarding oil, the Economist reports:

The president of the Agência Nacional de Petróleo (the industry regulating agency) puts total potential reserves in [Brazil’s] Santos Basin at 80bn barrels. If the new discoveries are found to be commercially viable, Brazil could become one of the world's major oil-producing and exporting countries.

Brazil’s offshore fields alone would rank it #8 in world oil reserves, behind 5 Middle Eastern countries, Canada, and Venezuela, but ahead of Russia.

China

Harvard’s Niall Ferguson, proud he coined the term “Chimerica” to describe the world’s current two superpowers, waxes eloquent about the strength of China:

Asia’s latest and biggest industrial revolution scarcely paused to draw breath during the 2007-09 financial crisis. And what a revolution! Compare a tenfold growth of gross domestic product in the space of 26 years with a fourfold increase in the space of 70. The former has been China’s achievement between 1978 and 2004; the latter was Britain’s between 1830 and 1900. Or consider the fact that US GDP was more than eight times that of China’s at the beginning of this decade. Now it is barely four times larger – and if the projections from Jim O’Neill, Goldman Sachs’ chief economist, prove to be correct, China will overtake America as soon as 2027: in less than two decades.

India

Conventional wisdom holds that China comes out ahead of India partly because it’s done better at controlling population growth. But Indians figure lots of young people compared to China helps their country. After all:

U.N. projections say the population of working-age citizens in China will peak in 2015 and plunge by 23% by 2050. By then, there will be 438 million Chinese 60 or older, or 61 people older than 60 for every 100 adults of working age, up from just 16 in 2005.

In India by contrast, the population continues to explode. According to the Wall Street Journal:

Megacities are sprouting around the globe. But in billion-person India, the trend is on steroids. The country already has 25 of the world's 100-fastest growing urban areas, according to City Mayors, an international urban-affairs think tank. That compares with 8 in China.

To economist Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar, writing in The Times of India, India’s working-age population growth relative to China’s means that:

India will overtake China as the fastest-growing economy in the world. China will start ageing and suffering from a declining workforce. . . So its growth will decelerate, just as Japan decelerated in the 1990s after looking unstoppable in the 1980s. Having become the world's second-biggest economy, China's export-oriented model will erode sharply - the world will no longer be able to absorb its exports at the earlier pace. Meanwhile, India will gain demographically with a growing workforce that is more literate than ever before. The poorer Indian states will start catching up with the richer ones. This will take India's GDP growth to 10% by 2020, while China's growth will dip to 7-8%.

At present, India's gross domestic product has been growing faster than that of most other developing countries, averaging 8.8% a year over the past five years. In 2009, a rough year elsewhere, India’s economy grew by 7.9% through the third quarter, far surpassing expectations.

Brazil, India, and China—two democracies, two giants, two Asian powers, all non-European, three countries reshaping our world.