Last month’s 16th BRICS Summit in Kazan brought about clear signs of China’s intended aspirations for this group. This meeting marked the institution’s first leadership summit since Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa decided to invite several new members. At the beginning of this year, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates joined as full members. As a result, the BRICS constitutes approximately half the world’s population, more than a third of global GDP, several of the most militarily powerful countries, and many of the world’s leading energy consumers and producers. In addition to its new members, many other countries became formal BRICS affiliates in a so-called “BRICS Plus” group.
The gathering in Kazan, which met from October 22-24, represented the first BRICS summit in Russia since Moscow’s 2022 attack on Ukraine. It was also the most prominent international meeting in Russia in the last three years. The Russian government chose Kazan, rather than Moscow or St. Petersburg, as the host city to underscore the group’s credentials to represent the so-called Global South. Kazan is a more diverse and less European-oriented city than these other locations. More than 30 national representatives, including two dozen heads of state, attended the Kazan summit, along with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the heads of several regional bodies.
The Kazan summit was fundamentally Putin’s show. The Russian President dominated the media coverage as he engaged in more than a dozen formal bilateral meetings with other world leaders, along with many informal and group encounters. These displays consciously sought to demonstrate that Putin was not as isolated as he appeared during last year’s BRICS summit in South Africa. The Russian government only participated virtually to avoid embarrassing the host government, which technically was legally obliged to arrest Putin according to a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court.
Nonetheless, Russian aspirations to claim leadership of the non-Western world proved elusive. The visiting leaders and lengthy summit communique, the Kazan Declaration, skirted rather than supported Moscow’s position regarding Ukraine. Foreign delegates had to bring cash due to Western sanctions limiting access to Visa and Mastercard on Russian territory. The Russian government has yet to establish an alternative international payments system. The summit did not adopt Moscow’s proposed “BRICS Bridge,” which would provide a secure messaging system independent of the Western-controlled SWIFT payments mechanism. That said, the Kazan Declaration did propose consideration of a BRICS Clearing System (BRICS Clear) and many member countries might welcome currency mechanisms utilizing non-dollar currencies.
At the meeting, Chinese President Xi Jinping delivered a speech on “Combining the Great Strength of the Global South to Build Together a Community with a Shared Future for Mankind.” Xi declared several new initiatives to fortify the economic dimension of BRICS, including a Global Alliance on Artificial Intelligence for Industry and Manufacturing Center of Excellence in Shanghai, a planned World Smart Customs Community Portal, and a BRICS Customs Center of Excellence. Xi concluded his speech by advocating “more Global South countries in joining the cause of BRICS as full members, partner countries or in the ‘BRICS Plus’ format,” a position supported by Russia but not some other members, such as Brazil and India. Like Putin, Xi took advantage of the opportunity to convene important bilateral and trilateral meetings on the sidelines of the summit, including a prominent public reconciliation session with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and a meeting with Putin marking the 75th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Moscow and the PRC.
Though the Chinese government is using the BRICS to advance its ambitions for building a more favorable international system, Beijing’s backing for the BRICS is not exclusive. Like other BRICS members, the Chinese government advances its interests through multiple institutions.
At the global level, China has been striving to acquire leadership roles in many UN organs and other bodies shaping worldwide norms and rules, especially concerning emerging economic and security questions where China has more space to advance its preferences than regarding more established issues. Beijing is also promoting new multinational collaboration mechanisms under its leadership. At Kazan, Xi cited the contribution of “my Global Security Initiative” for advancing world peace. He also referenced China’s Global Development Initiative for facilitating international development and its Global Civilization Initiative for promoting harmony among nations.
The same diversity is evident in how Beijing addresses priority world regions. Though China has promoted African membership in the BRICS, Beijing has heavily resourced its separate Forum on China-Africa Cooperation. In Eurasia, Beijing also pursues its interests through both the Belt and Road Initiative (in potential competition with the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Like the BRICS, the latter institution has also expanded in membership. But while Central Asia is poorly represented in BRICS, the SCO privileges that region, giving Beijing more direct influence in an area of great importance for western China’s economic development and border security. Whereas Kazakhstan has declined to develop ties with the BRICS, Astana sees value in maintaining a lead role in the SCO.
Another benefit to Beijing is that the SCO more directly addresses transnational terrorist threats in Eurasia, providing an institutional structure by which China can conduct quasi-military exercises in Central Asia or engage indirectly with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. The organization also offers a potential mechanism to broaden the recent Sino-Indian reconciliation to include Chinese-ally Pakistan. However, China-Russia differences over the SCO’s economic projects and other issues are more visible than in the BRICS, where Beijing and Moscow align closely on initiatives to raise the group’s profile and expand its membership. Beijing’s level of interest in the SCO will become clearer during its presidency of the organization this year. The PRC Foreign Ministry recently declared that China will host more than a hundred SCO-related events during the twelve months starting September 2024 under the theme “Carrying forward the Shanghai Spirit: SCO in Action.”
Interestingly, China and the United States have reduced their attention to the Group of Twenty (G20), which like the UN Security Council has suffered from acute internal confrontations among its great power members, even as rising states like Brazil and India have strived for more influence in both bodies. Still, the existing institutional pluralism helps dampen the prospects of a new Cold War-like confrontation between two rival blocs by depriving the Sino-Russian alignment of an institution as strong as NATO or the European Union.
