Foreign Desk: Chinese President Xi Jinping will attend the BRICS Leaders’ Summit in South Africa on a state visit. The apex conference of the alliance is meeting next week.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunyang said in an online statement that President Xi will attend the 15th BRICS summit at the invitation of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. The conference will be held in Johannesburg. He will be there from 21st to 24th August.
This will be Xi’s second international trip in 2023. The Chinese President visited Russia in March. He visited South Africa in 2018 to strengthen diplomatic and economic ties with his country.
The leaders of Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa will sit down next week to discuss how to turn the faltering alliance that accounts for a quarter of the world’s economy into a geopolitical force challenging the hegemony of the developed world.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has an international arrest warrant for war crimes in Ukraine, will attend not in person but via video.
69 countries have been invited to this conference to be held in South Africa. The issue of alliance expansion may be on the agenda. Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Argentina and Ethiopia have expressed interest in joining the alliance.