EDITORIAL 2: BRICS is China’s playground
Context
India’s membership of multilateral institutions such as BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) has been justified along the lines that these provide platforms to push for a more multipolar world order that limits the dominance of Western powers and West-led institutions.
BRICS
- Indeed, BRICS emerged as a group focused on challenging the norms that shaped multilateral economic institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.
- BRICS offered another avenue for India’s aspirations for global leadership as it, along with Brazil, China and Russia, negotiated a larger proportion of quotas and votes at these institutions.
- In recent years, as BRICS has expanded its membership, it has arguably provided India another platform to develop ties with countries in the Global South.
Foreign policy goals
- The international order is going through a transformation and the contours of the new order are not yet clear, and it is pertinent to ask whether China-dominated institutions such as BRICS will help India or drag it down.
- While BRICS and the SCO still provide India platforms to push for multipolarity, they do not further many of its key foreign policy goals.
- In some cases, its interests might even be adversely affected through the collective positions taken.
- Clearly, China’s economic size, assertive foreign policy and dominance in these institutions limit the extent to which India can exert its influence and secure its interests.
China’s playground
- China’s GDP, at $17.79 trillion, is nearly five times the size of India’s at $3.56 trillion.
- This economic might, along with China’s extensive trade and investment ties with other BRICS countries, allow it to exert greater political influence.
- At the BRICS summits, Beijing has used its leverage to promote goals such as de-dollarisation and expansion of the organisation’s membership.
- It has also used the venue to advocate for a larger role in global governance for itself.
- While India seeks to pursue some of these goals, it has not been able to further its interests through BRICS.
Leader of Global South
- While India seeks to expand its ties with countries in the Global South and portray itself as their leader, given the deep economic ties China enjoys with other BRICS countries, it is difficult for New Delhi to claim the leadership mantle while operating within the organisation.
- Additionally, India is deeply conflicted on de-dollarisation. While it has not been opposed to creating alternative payment mechanisms, it has enjoyed strong and increasing trade and investment ties with the US and has sought to limit its dependence on China.
- The economic asymmetry within BRICS has also spilled over in the way Beijing has used the New Development Bank, the group’s flagship financial institution.
- While India has borrowed for its infrastructure projects, it is China that has been able to leverage its economic power to shape the discussion at the NDB around infrastructure and connectivity, which in turn bolsters its Belt and Road Initiative.
Way forward
- As China’s economic might has continued to grow and its foreign policy has increased in ambition and assertiveness, the forum today might constrain rather than further India’s foreign policy objectives. Indian leaders might be well advised to reevaluate BRICS’s utility.