How Asia is redefining what BRICS really means — SkimNews
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- Six Asian members — China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE — account for roughly 83% of BRICS' GDP by purchasing power parity (90% including transcontinental Russia), with China alone supplying 58%.
- China and India together represent 71% of BRICS' population and 74% of its GDP, while the bloc as a whole accounts for about 40% of global GDP and nearly half of humanity.
- China and India absorb 44% of Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Iran crude exports; the UAE shipped about 3.2 million barrels a day in 2025 with 99% bound for Asia and Oceania, and China imported a record 11.6 million barrels a day that year.
- India's 2026 BRICS chairmanship, themed "Building Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability," fuses energy security with affordability, sustainability, and innovation — an Asian political vocabulary linking geopolitics to development rather than abandoning it.
- Combined UAE-Qatar LNG exports account for nearly 20% of global LNG trade — almost 90% bound for Asian markets as of 2025 — meaning BRICS energy security is now inseparable from the safety of Gulf chokepoints and Indian Ocean sea lanes.
- BRICS members are moving away from dollar-replacement rhetoric toward "financial redundancy" through expanded China-India local-currency trade, Gulf reserve diversification, and Russian alternative payment channels built under Western sanctions.
Why it matters: With Asian members supplying 83% of BRICS GDP and absorbing 44% of Gulf crude exports, the bloc's agenda is increasingly set by Asian priorities — energy security, tech infrastructure, institutional reform — rather than the anti-Western symbolism Washington is watching for. India holds the 2026 chairmanship and is steering BRICS toward delivery on development.
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