Abstract: The term "BRIC", coined by O'Neill in 2001 for Brazil, Russia, India, and China, has drawn great attentions from the research and business communities. Some even suggest that BRIC symbolizes a shift in world power away from the G7 and the U.S. to the emerging nations especially China. The use of the acronym received a big boost when the BRIC countries formed a political alliance on June 16, 2009，when the leaders of the BRIC countries held their first summit and issued a declaration calling for the establishment of an equitable, democratic and multipolar world order. As the dominant power in BRIC, China opened the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) on 16 January 2016 to leverage its growing economic power to gain geopolitical influence.

As the introduction to this special issue, this article has the following objectives: (1) to argue that BRIC symbolizes the rise of new great powers since the 19th century and analyze the historical context of BRIC’s rise. (2) to examine the strategy of BRIC and especially China, and political consequences of their rise. (3) to assess the potential of China to become a superpower and its possibility to achieve hegemony. (4) to propose the concept of potential superpower (PSP) for the studies of world power structure.