China and the BRICS: prioritization or pluralism?

Last month’s 16th BRICS Summit in Kazan revealed clear signs of China’s intended ambitions 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 forms about half the world’s population, more than a third of global GDP, some of the most militarily powerful countries and many of the world’s largest energy consumers and producers. In addition to the new members, many other countries formally joined the BRICS in a so-called “BRICS Plus” group.

The meeting in Kazan, which took place from October 22 to 24, represented the first BRICS summit in Russia since Moscow’s attack on Ukraine in 2022. It was also the most prominent international meeting in Russia in the past three years. The Russian government chose Kazan, rather than Moscow or St. Petersburg, as the host city to underline the group’s credentials as a representative of the so-called Global South. Kazan is a more diverse and less European-oriented city than these other locations. More than thirty national representatives, including twenty heads of state, attended the summit of Kazan, together with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and the heads of various regional bodies.

The Kazan summit was essentially Putin’s spectacle. The Russian president dominated media coverage as he took part in more than a dozen formal bilateral meetings with other world leaders, in addition to many informal and group meetings. These displays consciously sought to demonstrate that Putin was not as isolated as he seemed at last year’s BRICS summit in South Africa. The Russian government participated only virtually to avoid embarrassing the host government, which was technically legally obligated to arrest Putin on a warrant. issued by the International Criminal Court.

Nevertheless, Russian aspirations to claim leadership over the non-Western world proved elusive. The visiting leaders and the long summit communiqué, the Kazan Declaration, fringed instead of supporting Moscow’s position on Ukraine. Foreign delegates had to bring cash due to Western sanctions restricting access to Visa and Mastercard on Russian soil. The Russian government has yet to establish an alternative international payment system. The summit adopted Moscow’s proposed “BRICS bridge”, which would provide a secure messaging system independent of the Western-controlled SWIFT payment mechanism. That said, the Kazan Declaration proposed the consideration of a BRICS clearing system (BRICS Clear) and many member states could welcome currency mechanisms using non-dollar currencies.

Chinese President Xi Jinping delivered a speech during the meeting “Combining the great power of the global South to build together a community with a shared future for humanity.” Xi declared several new initiatives to strengthen 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 to join the cause of BRICS as full members, partner countries or in the ‘BRICS Plus’ format,” a position supported by Russia, but not by some other members, such as Brazil and India. Like Putin, Xi took the opportunity to convene important bilateral and trilateral meetings on the sidelines of the summit, including a prominent audience. 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 People’s Republic of China.

Although the Chinese government is using the BRICS to further its ambitions of building a more favorable international system, Beijing’s support for the BRICS is not exclusive. Like other BRICS members, the Chinese government promotes its interests through multiple institutions.

At the global level, China has been pursuing this acquiring leadership roles in many UN bodies and other bodies that shape global norms and rules, especially when it comes to emerging economic and security issues, where China has more room to express its preferences than when it comes to more established issues. Beijing is also promoting new multinational cooperation mechanisms under his leadership. In Kazan, Xi cited the contribution of “my Global Security Initiative” to promoting world peace. He too referred to 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 Beijing’s approach to priority world regions. Although China has promoted African membership of the BRICS, Beijing has heavily funded its own membership Forum on China-Africa Cooperation. In Eurasia, Beijing also pursues its interests through both 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 grown in number. But while Central Asia is poorly represented in the BRICS, the SCO privileges that region, giving Beijing more direct influence in an area of ​​great importance to western China’s economic development and border security. While Kazakhstan has refused to develop ties with the BRICS, Astana sees value in maintaining one leading role in the SCO.

Another advantage for Beijing is that the SCO will more directly address transnational terrorist threats in Eurasia, creating an institutional structure that allows China to conduct quasi-military exercises in Central Asia or work indirectly with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. The organization also offers a potential mechanism to extend the recent Sino-Indian reconciliation to Chinese ally Pakistan. However, the differences between China and Russia over the SCO’s economic projects and other issues are more visible then in the BRICS, where Beijing and Moscow are closely aligned with initiatives to raise the group’s profile and expand its membership. Beijing’s interest in the SCO will become more apparent during the organization’s chairmanship this year. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China recently declared that China will host more than a hundred SCO-related events during the twelve months from September 2024 under the theme “Continuing the Shanghai spirit: SCO in action.”

Interestingly, China and the United States have reduced their attention Group of twenty (G20), who like the UN Security Council has suffered from acute internal confrontations among the members of the great power, while emerging states such as Brazil and India have sought greater influence in both bodies. Yet existing institutional pluralism helps dampen the prospects of a new Cold War-style confrontation between two rival blocs by depriving Sino-Russian alignment of an institution as strong as NATO or the European Union.

Read in China-US focus.

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