President Xi Jinping delivers a keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the BRICS Business Forum in Xiamen, East China's Fujian province, Sept 3, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua]

President Xi Jinping called on BRICS countries Sunday to enhance economic cooperation and improve global economic governance amid the developing countries' efforts to achieve stable growth in the face of a weak global economic recovery.

In his keynote speech at the BRICS Business Forum held in coastal Xiamen, Xi said that BRICS members - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - are facing the same development goals in spite of their different national situations.

"Economic cooperation is the root and foundation for BRICS cooperation," he said.

The president called on BRICS countries to shoulder their responsibilities of safeguarding world peace and seeking cooperation instead of confrontation. Under Chinese presidency this year, BRICS has held a number of events to enhance security cooperation, he said.

The emerging markets and developing countries should make positive contributions to global economic growth through such measures as pushing to build an open world economy, facilitating trade and investment and making new global value chains, he said.

The development of emerging markets and developing countries are not to "move anybody's cheese", but to "strive to make the cake of global economy bigger", he added.

BRICS should be built into a platform for cooperation among emerging markets and developing nations, Xi said.

"It's easy to break an arrow but difficult to break 10 (simultaneously)," he said.

Brazilian President Michel Temer and South African President Jacob Zuma attended the opening ceremony of the sideline forum to the BRICS Summit. About 1,200 people, including 1,069 senior executives from 630 companies from China and abroad, joined the two-day forum.

BRICS is playing a key role in the world economy and in global governance. Together, the five member countries accounted for 23 percent of the 2016 global economy, almost double their share in 2006. The five have been the source of more than half of global growth in the past 10 years.

The emerging markets' cooperative mechanism was initially launched in 2006 with four members - Brazil, Russia, India and China. South Africa was admitted in 2010. The group's first summit was held in Yekaterinburg, Russia, in 2009.