# The Economist Who Invented 'BRICS' Now Says Two Letters Are Carrying the Whole Acronym > Twenty-five years after coining the term that reshaped how the world talks about emerging markets, Jim O'Neill says the grouping only works because of India and China, and that Europe's complacency is part of the problem. - Source: Morning Week - Canonical URL: https://morningweek.com/article/the-economist-who-invented-brics-now-says-two-letters-are-carrying-the-whole-acronym - Author: Morning Week Newsroom - Section: Finance & Economics - Published: 2026-10-19T09:05:14.809Z - Updated: 2026-10-19T09:05:14.809Z - Tags: Jim O'Neill, BRICS, Europe, India, China, Goldman Sachs, global economy --- Twenty-five years ago, the Goldman Sachs economist Jim O'Neill wrote a paper that gave the world a new way to talk about emerging economies, coining the acronym BRICS for Brazil, Russia, India and China at a time when the four countries together accounted for less than 10 percent of global GDP. The term went on to define a generation of investment strategy and geopolitical commentary. Now, in a new paper, O'Neill is revisiting his own creation with a notably blunter verdict. ## An acronym propped up by two letters O'Neill's central claim is that the grouping has become lopsided. Economically, he argues, BRICS has turned into something close to a vehicle for just the I and the C, India and China, while Brazil and Russia have fallen well short of the trajectory his original paper envisioned for them. The acronym survives as a geopolitical label even as its economic logic rests almost entirely on two of its four members. ## The growth gap, in one comparison The numbers behind that claim are striking. Since 2000, China's per capita economic output has grown by a cumulative 554 percent, and India's by 246 percent. Over the same period, the United States grew by 45 percent, Europe by about 30 percent, and the United Kingdom by 29 percent. O'Neill sees India in particular as having room to keep compounding at a rapid pace, projecting annual growth in the range of 7 to 8 percent over the next 15 to 20 years on the strength of its demographics alone. ## A pointed message for Europe If the paper is generous toward India and China, it is unsparing toward Europe. O'Neill describes European nations in terms rarely used by a mainstream economist about his own continent, characterizing them as some combination of very lazy, very content, subconsciously still colonial, and unambitious. His specific complaint is structural as much as cultural: France, Italy and Germany each insist on holding individual seats at major global tables, a setup O'Neill argues selfishly blocks faster-growing emerging economies from gaining the representation their size now warrants. O'Neill's critique extends to what he calls Western hypocrisy, pointing to protectionist instincts inside European markets even as the same governments condemn similar practices when China uses them. ## Breaking with the prevailing narrative on China O'Neill also pushes back directly against the version of the China story that has dominated recent American political rhetoric, dismissing arguments associated with Donald Trump about China as not based on any evidence. His own reading of the data points in the opposite direction, toward a Chinese economy that has delivered the strongest sustained per capita growth of any major economy over the past quarter century, acronym politics aside. The paper's broader argument is less about scoring points against any single country than about forcing a reckoning with how much the global economic map has actually shifted since he first sketched it out. O'Neill's suggested path forward is for Western institutions to accept that non-Western nations will keep operating by their own logic rather than insisting the rest of the world eventually converges on Western norms. Twenty-five years after naming the group, his own paper reads less like an update to the acronym and more like an argument that the world it was meant to describe has already moved on. --- Originally published by Morning Week. Free to cite with attribution and a link to https://morningweek.com/article/the-economist-who-invented-brics-now-says-two-letters-are-carrying-the-whole-acronym.