This is quite an interesting little comment buried down in a Financial Times article today, about how the Chinese authorities are raising a lot of international concerns (including inside Brazil, the other titan of the BRIC grouping) by artificially keeping their currency undervalued and failing to allow for the development of what could become one of the world’s most desired consumer markets.  Americans and Europeans are looking to save in 2010 following the crisis, while China has pumped more than $500 billion into increasing its industrial capacity.  That’s quite a lot of cheap exports thrown out there in a market which may feature lower demand … can we guess what is going to happen if changes aren’t made soon?  U.S. economic power is not totally erased quite yet.

“If they curb domestic demand that means we’re right back to where we started from, which is export-led growth with a dose of inflation,” Mr Dumas says.

“It’s the Chinese gaining world share by mauling the exporters of Japan and Germany.”

The concerns about China’s growth model extend to the inside of the emerging-market camp as well. Brazil’s manufacturers have been complaining bitterly that, with the Brazilian real pushed up by the soaring prices of Brazil’s commodity exports, Chinese manufactures have been driving them out of their home market, let alone third markets abroad.

And it is such tensions that undermine the notion of a unified camp of Bric countries, or a wider grouping of emerging markets. Given the population size of some of the big emerging market countries, and how much they have to catch up with the rich world, it is not surprising their contribution to the world economy is growing.

But to talk of the rising powers forming a coherent bloc of economic power than can run the world is, at best, premature.