Advances in International Marketing

The global financial and economic crises have accelerated the rise of emerging markets in the global economy. In fact, the BRICs (i.e., Brazil, Russia, India, and China) have become the engine of global economic growth in the past two years when the developed economies were struggling to regain their growth. China became the largest exporter in the world in 2009 and has just overtaken Japan in mid-2010 to become the second largest economy in the world. India has made huge stride in attracting MNCs' investment and is poised to become the main destination of business process outsourcing. Brazil has regained its confidence as the largest economy in South America and as a major economy in the world. After struggling in the face of oil price collapse in 2008, Russia is back on track with robust growth, thanks to the rebound of oil price. Even outside the BRICs, many developing economies are doing very well. For example, Turkey, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Argentina, and several African countries have seen their growth rates surpassing 5% per year for several years. There seems to be a fast shift of global economic power to the developing world, especially to the BRICs.