Australians have become accustomed in recent years to focusing on the transformation of China, the millions lifted out of poverty amid social shifts on the scale of 19th century Europe's industrial revolution. Julia Gillard is expected in Beijing next month for her second trip as Prime Minister, which will serve to reinforce China's central importance to the modern Australian story. Talk of an ''Asian Century'' is the present fashion, meant as an acknowledgement that the centre of political gravity is shifting to this neighbourhood. But there is a risk if this is only seen as a China story. As foreign affairs academic Michael Wesley put it in a speech in Canberra this week, ''Australia needs to stop chopping up Asia into the bits that are most important to us, and forgetting about the rest.'' This logic could be extended: Australia should not emphasise Asia at the expense of broader changes in the world. It is worth remembering Gillard was also in Brazil last June. Then she went to Russia in September, and in October, to India. Together with China, these make up the BRIC countries - a snappy acronym christened in a business report to describe ''emerging economies'' but since adopted, with South Africa added to the mix, as the title for a fairly informal annual gathering of each country's leaders. Search through the travel diary of past Australian prime ministers and you would be hard pressed to find he had visited each of these four countries inside a year. The standard homage to London, Washington, and in more recent decades, Jakarta, is far more familiar.

Gillard's recent travel is another signal of the remarkable shift in global power, and while Australians are better equipped than many to grasp the scale of this change, figuring out how to approach this new world still needs work. Take Russia for example, a fallen superpower ruled by kleptocrats squandering its wealth as the world's largest producer of oil. Vladimir Putin spent $18 billion ($18 billion!) hosting an Asia-Pacific summit last year in Vladivostok. Yet despite its massive problems with corruption, by luck of geography Russia is a land bridge stretching east to west from Asia to Europe. The prospect, distant though it may be, of Chinese freight one day being sent from Vladivostok to the massive Dutch port of Rotterdam - not by ship but by train across a Siberian tundra warmed by climate change - has tremendous implications for global power. If China can reach the European market by land, on trains that run much faster than the ships through the already crowded Suez Canal, the US is suddenly out of the equation as the self-appointed custodian of global shipping lanes. Some of Asia's ''strategic claustrophobia'', in Wesley's apt phrase, begins to dissipate and the leverage of the mighty American navy is suddenly lessened. Whether this scenario plays out or not, this is the kind of radical transformation Australia must expect to confront in the years ahead, consequences stemming not only from the spread of wealth but of new co-operation between countries previously too poor or ill-disposed to work together.

The BRICS leaders met in Durban this week, promising to pool their foreign reserves to offer big loans to poor nations and rival the Western-dominated World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Think of this as the international equivalent of breaking the monopoly of the big banks here in Australia, and the prospect of a rapid waning of Western influence starts to become apparent. Talk of the BRICS as a united force is readily dismissed in diplomatic circles - and not only in the West. The startling differences between the countries is usually cited as a reason they will never co-operate closely. Democratic Brazil has suffered similar discomfort to Australia in dealing with authoritarian China, particularly in minerals and agriculture. India and China fought a war in living memory. Maybe it is true they will never be close. But it would be a mistake to ignore their co-operation altogether. During my trip to Sao Paulo - sponsored by the University of Melbourne, for a conference of delegates from Australia and Brazil - a hint of official concern crept into the talks. The implications of emerging economies excluding the West and, in turn, the West closing ranks, is clearly on people's minds. This is especially centred on the Group of 20 meeting, or G20, the forum Australia so proudly boasts as its ticket to global influence. Also taking part in the conference at Sao Paulo was an Australian official, Gordon de Brouwer, who has the delightful title in the Prime Minister's Department of ''G20 Sherpa''. His job is as wry as it sounds - de Brouwer leads Julia Gillard to the ''summit'' and steers her around the pitfalls and obstacles. The BRICS are each members of the G20 and de Brouwer offered a striking warning about the danger of ''stage-managed'' and ''brittle'' diplomacy taking over the gathering. If the BRICS make decisions among themselves and present an entrenched view to the wider summit, the G20 would lose what was seen as its strength in the global financial crisis: a flexible attitude among key leaders to decide on a uniform course of action.

It is not only the BRICS - an older grouping, the G7, stubbornly lives on, a forum from which countries such as Australia are excluded. De Brouwer warned this division of G20 members into sub-groups only reinforced the old north-south divide. Australia is anxious not to be left out as new global power structures take shape. Yet that is a choice others will ultimately make. This is not to say we are a nation without influence, but charting a course in this world of change will involve a lot more responsiveness than declaration. And that means choosing friends. Australia might be smaller, but it actually shares many attributes with countries such as Brazil and South Africa, an economy built on rich natural endowments. So here is one for the puzzle pages: what word can you make by adding an ''A'' to BRICS? Daniel Flitton is senior correspondent of The Age. Follow the National Times on Twitter