China's BRICS Play: Institutional Weight and the Road to Its 2027 Presidency

China's President Xi Jinping travelled to India for the 18th BRICS Summit, held under New Delhi's chairship, in a visit that carried significance both for its timing and for the scale of the delegation accompanying him. It was his first trip to India in seven years, and it unfolded as the two countries move through the motions of normalisation. The Chinese delegation was reported to number as many as 400 people, with Cai Qi, a member of the Politburo Standing Committee and director of the CPC Central Committee's General Office, and Wang Yi, a Politburo member and one of China's longest-serving foreign ministers, among the key participants.

Beijing's engagement with the grouping is institutional rather than rhetorical, with attention already turning to China's own BRICS presidency, which begins in January 2027.

An economic pillar for rule-setting

For Beijing, BRICS functions as the economic arm of a wider argument about who writes global rules. At the recent SCO Summit in Bishkek, Xi described the SCO as an organisation whose "heart beats with the Global South" and placed BRICS "at the forefront" of that grouping of developing economies. The formulation positions China as a voice for the Global South and advances the idea that BRICS competes directly with the West.

The grouping also serves as a platform for gradually normalising the renminbi in local-currency trade, furthering de-dollarisation, and promoting the Global Development Initiative as a model for a "no-one-left-behind" economy. Both propositions were absent from the 2026 New Delhi Declaration. China placed all of its international aid and economic programmes under the GDI umbrella at the 2022 BRICS Summit, and members have little room to resist the proposition given that China is the largest trading partner for each of them.

Beijing as institutional entrepreneur

China has invested in BRICS's organisation with an almost "too big to fail" approach, emerging as its most proactive, normative and institutional entrepreneur. Xi proposed the "BRICS Plus" model at Xiamen in 2017, the format that made the 2024 and 2025 expansions conceptually possible. China pushed for the New Development Bank in 2014, and the bank is based in Shanghai. When the BRICS Contingency Reserve Arrangement was announced, China contributed USD 41 billion of its USD 100 billion corpus, with India, Brazil and Russia contributing USD 18 billion each and South Africa USD 5 billion. The BRICS Partnership on New Industrial Revolution innovation centre, announced by Beijing at the 2020 Summit presided over by Russia, has facilitated over a hundred cooperation projects worth more than 62 billion yuan (USD 9.24 billion).

Currency question and insulation

Rapid movement towards settling more trade in local currencies, especially the renminbi, and de-risking the NDB and the CRA from conducting business in dollars would offer insulation from SWIFT sanctions and the costs of complying with a dollar-dominated world — concerns Russia and Iran have lived with and China fears.

Signalling around the 2026 Summit

Foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning framed Xi's participation as putting forward China's initiatives and charting the course for the high-quality development of greater BRICS cooperation. A Global Times editorial published as Xi departed was more direct about China's 2027 goals, promising a presidency built around "genuine multilateralism", alignment of development strategies, and the familiar suite of Chinese initiatives — Belt and Road, and the Global Development, Security, Civilisation and Governance Initiatives. Deliverables, it suggested, would come in the digital economy, artificial intelligence, green development, poverty reduction and agriculture. On the bilateral track, Ambassador Xu Feihong spoke of handling differences properly and being "partners helping each other succeed".

Three takeaways for India

Beijing's ability to capture the agenda across multilateral fora, including BRICS and the SCO, stands out. As China takes on the presidency, its stated 2027 programme is a list of its own branded initiatives. Because BRICS works by consensus, much of India's diplomatic energy next year will likely go into deciding, paragraph by paragraph and initiative by initiative, what it is willing to endorse within a grouping it also founded.

The currency question is where the gap between members is widest. The Indian government has been consistent and unambiguous on de-dollarisation, arguing that Delhi has no policy of replacing the dollar and that global economic stability rests on its reserve status. Delhi's push for Central Bank-Backed Digital Currencies before the 2026 Summit — a proposition that also evaded the Declaration — shows India does not oppose de-risking from the vagaries of the global financial market. Yet the BRICS 2025 declaration's call for acceptable local-currency financing mechanisms was still viewed in Washington as de-dollarisation. For China, the direct tussle with India is over how far financial alternatives can go, and its flexibility is motivated by factors India has no luxury of adapting to.

Finally, China's GDP exceeds that of the rest of the membership combined. It is the largest trading partner of all members and, as established, the economic weight carrying BRICS's tangible assets. India cannot hope to match it buck-to-buck, but the onus is also on Delhi to put weight behind its words and enhance its capital commitment to the grouping. That will require deep-seated structural reforms, ranging from strengthening the rupee to significantly expanding exports.