As China assumes the annual presidency of BRICS (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa)—a group of rising powers seeking to reform global governance—its rivalry with India is increasingly emerging as a threat to its global ambitions. The troubles in their bilateral relationship peaked in 2020 after a deadly clash along the un-delineated and un-demarcated Line of Actual Control in the Galwan Valley, and tensions revived again during the recent Winter Olympics in Beijing, due to India’s diplomatic boycott. Despite this situation, India has remained committed to BRICS, but the group’s ability to jointly reform the international system is increasingly questionable.
In less than two decades, BRICS has emerged as an advocacy group combining the efforts of the world’s key rising powers to reform global governance and establish a multipolar order. The group accounts for 41 percent of the world population, 24 percent of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP) and over 16 percent of global trade (based on World Bank 2019 World Bank 2019 data). It pursues collective action on a large number of policy issues through BRICS institutions like the New Development Bank which was started in 2015 and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement. Its policy coordination covers over seventy issue-areas and includes leaders’ meetings, trans-governmental cooperation and multi-stakeholder initiatives. As the BRICS President in 2022, China seeks to further strengthen the group’s internal coordination and its voice in global governance. Yet, despite the growing prominence of BRICS cooperation, the future of the group is questionable.
The India-China conflict has been a permanent fixture in the group’s development. A common case against the BRICS’ relevance and prospects has been the fact that India and China have a protracted rivalry. Despite this, the two powers have formed a crucial axis of BRICS cooperation. The rivalry existed even before the formation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. It has manifested itself in the competition for influence in the developing world, over the disputed border, Tibet and the Dalai Lama, and in the competition for strategic space in the Indian Ocean, East Asia and South Asia.
Yet border tensions between Indian and Chinese troops in 2020 vitiated their relationship. The Galwan Valley clash on 15/16 June 2020 stands out as it led to casualties on both sides for the first time since 1975. It led to a resurgence of anti-China sentiments in India and reinforced the perception of China as the country’s primary security threat. As a result, the Indian government has undertaken measures to reduce its economic dependence on China, including banning Chinese mobile apps and restricting investments by Chinese companies. After the Galwan Valley clash, India has strengthened its support for the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue—comprising the United States, Australia, Japan and India—which Beijing perceives as an anti-China alliance, and it has enhanced political and defence ties with the United States.
Despite the tensions between China and India, BRICS has remained resilient. Sub-group conflicts can lead to different institutional scenarios—they can be downplayed or compartmentalized so as not to jeopardize collective action, or they can be honestly addressed and managed. India and China pursued the former. BRICS was never designed to be a security alliance, and has always held to key principles of consensus-based decision making and respecting its members’ sovereignty. As a result, neither the group nor its president are given the authority to mediate or intervene in bilateral conflicts between member states, and the general practice has always been to avoid discussing internal conflicts.
This hands-off approach to conflict management effectively prevented the Galwan Valley clash and subsequent deterioration in relations between China and India from making the BRICS dysfunctional. Not only did the group continue with business-as-usual and held annual summits virtually in 2020 and 2021, but it also continued to deepen economic and security cooperation among its members. The new ‘Strategy for BRICS Economic Partnership’ and the ‘Counterterrorism Strategy’ illustrate the members’ demand for deepening cooperation. The group’s functional interconnectedness—and its pursuit of global relevance and impact—exert an engagement “pull” on India and China and prevent them from leaving the group. Promising joint initiatives such as ‘BRICS Science, Technology and Innovation Framework Programme’, ‘BRICS Green Technology Platform’, and the ‘BRICS Partnership for New Industrial Revolution’ are an additional draw.
China and India have each benefited from this enhanced cooperation. BRICS has enabled China to challenge American hegemony without having to engage in a direct confrontation and create alternative structures to the United States-led institutions to manage development finance and monetary affairs. India’s BRICS participation has allowed it to push for a multipolar world order, contain China’s hegemonic tendencies, and prevent the latter from attaining a leadership position in South-South cooperation that would be detriment to Indian interests.
Notwithstanding BRICS’ usefulness to both countries, the tensions between India and China peaked again during the 2022 Winter Olympics. India diplomatically boycotted the Olympics after Qi Fabao, the People's Liberation Army commander involved in the Galwan Valley clash, was chosen as a torch-bearer. These renewed tensions complicate China’s hosting of Indian leaders during its BRICS Presidency and the development of joint projects. The crisis in Ukraine makes the situation even more complex, as BRICS members have been divided in their policy responses.
The stakes of India-China rivalry are high, particularly considering the geopolitical tensions in Eurasia. China needs to decide whether it wants to continue with a low-profile rise or signal its rejuvenation with a big bang. One option is to keep engaging other regional powers, avoid unilateralism and push for innovation in global governance. This approach could ameliorate its relationship with India, provided that India does the same. Alternatively, China can explicitly position itself as a new superpower that advances its Eurasian interests at any cost. In the latter case however, Beijing will undermine its BRICS Presidency and deepen the already serious geopolitical tensions with India, the US, and other regional powers.
Raj Verma, PhD, is Associate Professor of International Relations and Foreign Policy at College of International Relations, Huaqiao University, Head of Research Intellesia Institute and Adjunct Professor at Far Eastern University, Manila;
Mihaela Papa, PhD, is Co-Investigator, Rising Power Alliances project, and an Adjunct Assistant Professor in Sustainable Development and Global Governance at the Fletcher School at Tufts University. Mihaela Papa acknowledges that this work is related to her research supported by the Minerva Research Initiative grant N000141812744 issued by the U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR).
The views expressed in the article are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy or the National University of Singapore.
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AJIL Unbound, Volume 116 (2022), pp. 58-63
By Kristen Hopewell, Canada Research Chair in Global Policy, School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, University of British Columbia
Growing U.S.-China rivalry undoubtedly poses a profound threat to the multilateral trading system. Yet managing trade conflict between the United States and China is, I argue, only one of the twin challenges currently facing the multilateral trading system. The other is how to rein in growing economic coercion and the arbitrary abuse of power by dominant states in the system. The United States and China have each become highly disruptive forces in the liberal trading order—not simply because of their bilateral trade relations but also, and just as importantly, because of their behavior toward the rest of the world. Both of these countries have increasingly turned away from trade multilateralism and toward aggressive unilateralism and the raw use of coercive power in their dealings with other states. It is this flagrant disregard for the rule of law on the part of the system's two dominant powers that has thrown the World Trade Organization (WTO) into crisis and ultimately poses the greatest threat to the global trade regime.
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