YEKATERINBURG, Russia -- Leaders of the four largest emerging market economies discussed ways to reduce their reliance on the United States at their first formal summit meeting on Tuesday. But they concluded with only a cautious statement suggesting a move away from the dollar's role in global commerce and a call for greater representation of developing countries in global financial institutions.
By some predictions, the four nations, Brazil, Russia, India and China, a group referred to as the BRIC group, will surpass the current leading economies by the middle of this century, a tectonic shift that by this reckoning will eventually nudge the United States and Western Europe away from the center of world productivity and power.
| Until the Russians implode demographically and the Chinese fall apart into several warring states. |
Russia's president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, said the main point of the meeting was to show that "the BRIC should create conditions for a more just world order."
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