Venezuela's Maduro says seeking China's help to join BRICS

BEIJING: Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is seeking Beijing’s support to join the recently expanded BRICS group of emerging economies, as he makes a state visit to China.

The BRICS bloc — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — agreed at their annual summit last month to admit six new full members.

In an interview with Chinese state news agency Xinhua on Saturday, Maduro said he aimed to secure “the entry of Venezuela into BRICS, with the support of China, with the support of all countries”.

Beijing, Maduro said, could help to achieve the accession of “a country with the largest oil reserves in the world”.

“The enlarged BRICS could be defined as the great engine for the acceleration of the birth of a new world, a world of cooperation where the global south has the leading voice,” Maduro told Xinhua.

“The BRICS nations accelerate the de-dollarization of the world, the emergence of a new international financial system, of a new just economic order,” he said.

Maduro arrived in China on Friday and is expected to stay until Thursday for his first state visit to the country since 2018.

Beijing is Venezuela’s main creditor and has close ties with the diplomatically isolated, inflation-ravaged socialist nation.

The BRICS group will welcome new members Argentina, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates from January 1.

China views BRICS as a counterweight to multinational organisations it deems as dominated by the United States and other Western rivals.

Maduro’s visit comes as Xi skips a meeting of the G20 major economies in India.