IN a few days, Islamabad should closely watch the BRICS summit unfold in New Delhi. Chinese President Xi Jinping is scheduled to attend. The visit would be his first to India in seven years, and signal a meaningful China-India detente since the border clashes of 2020. China’s Vice President Han Zheng last year said the two countries must perform a “dragon-elephant tango”. Can the two Asian powers dance to the same music?
A BRICS within which China and India can cooperate — and which is marking the 20th year since its establishment — could offer a formidable counterpoint to the G7. The expanded bloc accounts for 45 per cent of the world’s population and around 35pc of global GDP.
But even with Beijing and New Delhi on side, BRICS’ scale and diversity hinders it from being a coherent Global South node in the multipolar world order. Member countries are too geographically and economically disparate to have shared currencies or FTAs, beyond agreeing to partially de-dollarise the world economy. They diverge on key geopolitical issues, global policy frameworks, and pending UN resolutions, limiting the bloc’s influence.
The bloc’s anti-Western leanings have been tempered under India’s chairmanship this year. The September meeting will also feel the strains of bringing Iran and the UAE together against the backdrop of a prolonged Middle Eastern conflict. As such, this meeting serves as a staging ground to enable the China-India thaw. That thaw has been underway since last year, when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Xi in Tianjin on the sidelines of the SCO summit. Senior government officials have subsequently met at intervals to discuss trade ties and border security.
What unfolds at the BRICS summit will matter to Pakistan.
But Xi’s visit to India, if it goes ahead, may not mark a major rapprochement. The two powers will instead seek to establish a well-managed rivalry, recognising the need for pragmatism in a world gone mad, and particularly in the face of US President Donald Trump’s caprices, specifically erratic trade tariffs. As Sanchari Ghosh put it in a recent piece, for India and China, “restoring diplomatic dialogue and practical cooperation does not require restoring trust. India appears to be embracing a form of competitive coexistence, accepting China as a long-term rival while maintaining enough engagement to prevent competition from hardening into perpetual confrontation”.
India’s priority will be balancing trade ties so as to tackle the $100 billion trade deficit, and access Chinese goods while reducing its dependency on Chinese imports, particularly in critical sectors such as solar and electronic components. India wants technology transfer, which China is not keen on — for Beijing, long-term ties would depend on India being a stable export market. The result is a hesitant openness on New Delhi’s part: India maintains caps on Chinese ownership and the government must vet proposed Chinese investments.
A likely outcome of the meet is better engagement on border security, critical to both countries at a time when they have other preoccupations and the wider region is destabilised. Any thaw should enable data sharing and other cooperation in the context of climate change, including disaster management coordination, an urgent topic as evidenced by the horrific flash flood in the border region of Nepal and China.
There is also potential for the China-India thaw to reopen consideration of Pakistan’s BRICS membership. Islamabad expressed interest in joining the bloc in 2023, though its membership has been pending due to Indian opposition. Perhaps Beijing’s advances with New Delhi could influence this conversation, particularly as BRICS chairing responsibilities transition from India to China next year.
Pakistan should continue to pursue BRICS membership, as the bloc offers opportunities for interaction with key regional players, and could open new low-tariff South-South trade opportunities (though expectations in this regard are to be managed: Pakistan already exports to many BRICS nations, and would have to significantly boost competitiveness and diversify its exports to benefit markedly). Islamabad would also have to balance BRICS ties with its Western market exposure, including access to schemes such as Europe’s GSP+, and recent engagement with the US on AI data centres and critical mineral supply chains.
Multipolarity means that non-Western groupings are proliferating, whether in the form of BRICS Plus or more strategic alliances such as the recent Makkah Joint Defence Agreement. The volume of such South groupings diminishes their geopolitical heft, but participation in them indicates diplomatic and strategic fluidity, a must in increasingly unpredictable times. For that reason alone, what unfolds in New Delhi during Xi’s visit will matter to Islamabad.
The writer is a political and integrity risk analyst.
X: @humayusuf
Published in Dawn, August 31st, 2026
