Foreign Policy magazine has issued a new Globalization Index and says:

Ask investment bankers about globalization’s newest frontier, and they might respond with one cryptic syllable: BRIC. The acronym, coined by the investment bank Goldman Sachs, stands for Brazil-Russia-India-China. “If things go right,” says one Goldman report, “in less than 40 years, the BRIC economies together could be larger than the G6 [Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United States] in US dollar terms.” But for all their prominence in predictions about globalization’s future, the BRICs have generally scored poorly on the Globalization Index, in large part because they have massive populations that are still rural and isolated from the global economy.

This year’s index shows that the isolation may finally be ending. China climbed three spots in the index, while Brazil and Russia each improved by five places. India’s ranking remained the same, but its overall performance improved in most areas. Each of these developing-world heavyweights is opening up in its own way. China’s trade volume grew to more than $1 trillion in 2004, pushing it past Japan to become the world’s third-largest trading nation (behind the United States and Germany).

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http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3603&page=2