BRICS Summer School - Durban 2022

Dr Yang, from UWC CI, was invited to participate in the BRICS Summer School South Africa, The BRICS bloc in the New Era of Development. The participants were actively involved in modules relating to BRICS and the policies relating to each country.

The Summer school was hosted in November, Durban University of Technology (DUT) located in Durban City in South Africa, partnering with the South African BIRCS Youth Association (SABYA), hosted the 2022 BRICS Summer School. The school included scholars from across the world, namely Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The school was well attended, with a total of sixty-six participants. Besides the BRICS countries, neighbouring countries were also included. This country included Nimbia, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.

The five-day Summer School aims to bring together 50 young leaders from BRICS and the Global South countries. To conduct workshops and lectures on economic, political, cultural and development in BRICS. Participants can expect to leave the programme with more insight and knowledge of the formation and history of BRICS, geopolitics, economics and the fundamentals of various cultures represented in all BRICS nations.

The modules of this Summer School included:

1. Introduction of BRICS (Russian guest speaker)

2. The role of the New Development Bank (Indian guest speaker)

3. Reforming of Multilateral Institutions (South African guest speaker)

4. Monetary and financial cooperations in BRICS (Brazilian guest speaker)

5. Climate action in BRICS (China guest speaker)

6. Digital BRICS, 4IR and Alternative Pathways in the Global Data Economy (South African guest speaker)

The Confucius Institude (CI) at DUT sponsored the five representatives from China to participate in this Summer School. They are: Ms Yang LIU, Dr Yang HANG, Ms Mengfei WANG, Ms Liling YAN and Mr Tak Wing YU.

In the five-day school, each country's representative was to provide an icebreaker activity to promote collaboration. On Wednesday, 23 November, the Chinese representative conducted an icebreaker relating to identifying the Summer School delegate's Chinese Zodiac Signs; following this was a group singing “we are family” sung by a series of Chinese artists.