At the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi, China seemingly got what it wanted—at least on the surface. President Xi Jinping was an honoured guest in India and, as his country was endorsed as the next BRICS chair, will host the next summit in 2027. Yet, the more significant outcome may be what China did not get—a BRICS organised primarily around its geopolitical contest with the West.
The 140-paragraph New Delhi Declaration (NDD), the longest BRICS declaration so far, reveals a subtle but significant shift. The bloc is beginning to move beyond a loose grouping of emerging economies towards a platform through which the Global South can gain greater voice, bargaining power and strategic autonomy. In this transformation, China remains the most powerful member. But it is no longer clear that it can define what BRICS means for everyone else.
This tension is central to BRICS. China is a major global power with ambitions to reshape the international order. Most other members are developing countries with different priorities. They do not want to wholly replace dependence on the West with dependence on China. They want more choices, more bargaining power and greater autonomy in dealing with both.
New Delhi brought this distinction into the open.
Xi’s vision for BRICS is ambitious. In his address, he presented it as an important platform for emerging-market and developing countries, and called for greater cooperation in artificial intelligence, supply chains, peace and stability, WTO-centred trade and global governance reform. He also proposed cooperation with China on AI-driven industrialisation.
Much of this language found its way into the NDD. But the context changed. These ideas were absorbed into a broader multilateral agenda rather than becoming the blueprint for a China-led alternative order.
The financial agenda is perhaps the clearest example. China and Russia strongly support reducing dependence on Western financial systems, increasing local-currency settlements and developing alternatives to the dollar. The NDD supports greater use of local currencies for cross-border payments and settlements; but it stops well short of a common BRICS currency or a formal de-dollarisation programme.
Instead, the Indian approach emphasises practical measures: interoperability of payment systems, the proposed BRICS Risk Lab in Gujarat’s GIFT City and continued work on investment and financial infrastructure.
This difference matters. For China, alternatives to the dollar can be part of a larger effort to reduce Western influence over the international financial system. For much of the Global South, the objective is more practical. They want options. They want Chinese finance without Chinese financial dependence. They want access to Western markets and institutions without the West dictating terms. They want the dollar to have competition, not necessarily to disappear. That is a quite different proposition from de-dollarisation.
Trade presents the same dilemma. The NDD opposes unilateral tariffs, non-tariff measures and protectionism, while it supports WTO reform. This can certainly be interpreted as a criticism of Western policies; it also exposes a contradiction within BRICS itself.
China is by far the largest trading power in the grouping. Yet many developing countries worry about market access to China, trade imbalances and non-tariff barriers. They want greater access to Chinese markets just as much as they want relief from Western trade restrictions. A call against protectionism cannot simply be read as an anti-American position. It is also a demand for China to open its markets further.
Technology brings the issue into a sharper focus. China has formidable strengths in AI, manufacturing, digital infrastructure and supply chains. Naturally, it wants BRICS cooperation to reinforce these advantages. The developing countries want technology, investment, skills and access to global value chains. But they do not want to simply become consumers of Chinese technology or suppliers of raw materials. The real demand of the Global South is therefore not technological dependence with a Chinese label; it is technological capability.
This is why the NDD is more important than some of the headlines surrounding the summit. It moves BRICS beyond the familiar China-versus-West narrative. The issue is not simply whether the US dollar should be replaced and Western institutions challenged. The more fundamental question is whether developing countries can create enough space to negotiate with everyone. India’s position at the summit illustrated this.
Xi’s visit to India, his first since 2019, and his meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi were themselves significant. Peace and stability on the border, trade imbalances, supply chains, people-to-people exchanges and rebuilding trust were among the issues discussed. Modi made clear that border stability was essential to improving bilateral relations. India was, thus, engaging China without aligning with China.
That distinction is important. India is simultaneously a member of BRICS and the Quad; a partner to the US, Europe and Japan; a G7 invitee; and a country with a continuing boundary dispute with China. Its participation in BRICS cannot, therefore, be interpreted as acceptance of a Beijing-led order.
India’s idea of multipolarity is different. It is not about replacing one hegemon with another. It is about ensuring that no single power can dominate the choices available to developing countries.
This may also explain why New Delhi was able to produce consensus among countries whose interests often diverge. The summit did not attempt to erase those differences. Instead, it created enough space for them to coexist within a common framework. Even on West Asia, where positions are often sharply divergent, the group achieved consensus with considerable diplomatic precision.
There is an irony here. China remains BRICS’s economic heavyweight and will take over the chairship in 2027. It has considerable resources with which to shape the organisation. Yet the group’s broader political direction may be moving in a way that is not entirely comfortable for Beijing. The more BRICS expands, the more difficult it becomes for any one power to define its agenda. This is the real story from New Delhi.
China wants BRICS to become a stronger pole in a changing world order. The Global South wants BRICS to give it greater weight within that order, and greater room to negotiate with China itself. That distinction could determine the bloc’s future.
If BRICS becomes an instrument of great-power rivalry, its developing-country members may eventually see it as another arena where they are expected to choose sides. If it becomes an instrument of Global South agency, its value will be very different.
The irony of the New Delhi summit, therefore, may be that though China came to strengthen BRICS as a pole of power, the Global South used it to strengthen it as a space for choice. In the long run, the ability to choose may prove more important than the ability to dominate.
Gurjit Singh | Former Ambassador to Germany and author of The Durian Flavour
(Views are personal)