The godfather has spoken – the godfather of the Bric group. Jim O’Neill of Goldman Sachs had planned to stay quiet over the holidays, but he couldn’t resist reacting to a gutsy move by China on Christmas Eve to insert South Africa into the acronym he coined.

According to reports in Chinese state media, China invited South Africa to join the four-letter club of fast-growing emerging markets – or at least to join a summit of theirs in China next year. In a note to clients on Wednesday, O’Neill wrote: “While this is clearly good news for South Africa, it is not entirely obvious to me as to why the Bric countries should have agreed.”

As chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management today, he clearly doesn’t want to offend anyone. But the implicit message of his note is that the Bric concept has become political and been unmoored from the economic logic that underpinned his creation of it in 2001 when he was Goldman’s top economist.