Emerging powers have helped poorer nations weather the global recession

IN COLD-WAR days America and the Soviet Union vied for influence among the poor world’s minnows. Now the BRICs—Brazil, Russia, India and China—are getting into the game, and changing it. This month, Sri Lanka got $290m from China for a new international airport and $67m from India to upgrade its railways. As poor countries emerge from recession and the rich world flounders, big middle-income countries see a once-in-a-generation chance to win friends and influence people.

The process is sometimes direct (through aid, trade, remittances, investment) and sometimes indirect (through commodity prices or competition in third markets, for instance). But it is always hard to pin down. None of the new donors (all of which, except Russia, still get aid themselves) publishes comprehensive, or even comprehensible, figures. But a new study* by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), a British think-tank, says the emerging countries (such as the BRICs) increasingly affect the growth prospects of poorer ones. In other words, after decades of talk about the importance of “south-south” ties, those links have finally started to mean something. …