Advertisement
Will India end up alienated from Brics over US tilt, attempts to dilute China’s influence?
- India wants to create a subgroup to dilute China’s influence in Brics, but observers say it’s also ‘trying to get what it can’ from Beijing and the US
- Analysts say they find the growing divide between the US and its allies and an increasingly China-led Global South ‘concerning’
Reading Time:4 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
80
India’s bid to champion the Global South could help it prevent Brics from becoming an anti-Western alliance while rivalling China’s aim to be a “de facto leader” of the bloc, analysts say, but New Delhi’s US tilt means it could eventually become alienated from the group for “trying to get what it can from both sides”.
Advertisement
Late last month, the Brics grouping of developing nations announced the admission of six new members at a summit in Johannesburg, in a decision widely described as an attempt to reshape the international order and provide a counterweight to the United States and its allies.
From January, Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE will join the current five members – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – in a move described by China’s President Xi Jinping as “historic”.
Beijing had long been the leading proponent of admitting new members, presenting an enlarged Brics as a way for the Global South to have a stronger voice in world affairs.
Anu Anwar, a non-resident associate at Harvard University’s John K. Fairbank Centre for Chinese Studies, aid that India advocated for the inclusion of countries which it has more influence over, such as the UAE and Egypt, due to worries that an expanded Brics might weaken Delhi’s influence in the grouping.
Advertisement
Advertisement