Xi Gets Red Carpet at BRICS as India, China Thaw — SkimNews
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- Xi Jinping received a red-carpet welcome in India for the BRICS summit, his first visit in seven years, marking the biggest step toward reconciliation since a 2020 Himalayan border clash that killed 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers.
- The 11-member BRICS bloc—expanded to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, now accounting for half the global population—unanimously adopted the "New Delhi declaration" Saturday calling for "maximum restraint" in the Middle East, though it avoided naming member countries actively involved in conflicts.
- India and China diverge on the group's purpose: Beijing seeks BRICS as a counterweight to Trump's US, while Prime Minister Modi opened talks declaring BRICS was "not against anyone," with Chatham House's Chietigj Bajpaee noting Delhi struggles to maintain "strategic hedging" during a disruptive US presidency.
- Internal fractures have widened since the bloc's expansion: Iran was bombing Saudi Arabia and the UAE earlier this year, and BRICS foreign ministers failed to agree on a joint statement when they met in Delhi in May, prompting Chinese thinktanker Jiang Shixue to warn the 11 members "cannot speak with one voice on many issues."
- Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian were already in India when Xi arrived, with Modi hosting one of the group's most closely watched gatherings since its 2009 inception as wars in Ukraine and the Middle East test the bloc's ability to find common ground.
Why it matters: The unanimous New Delhi declaration gives the expanded bloc a veneer of unity at a moment of shaky US global dominance, but adding Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE—regional enemies as recently as this year—has widened its fault lines rather than closed them. Modi's attempt to position BRICS as a non-aligned bridge risks looking out of step with anti-western members China, Russia, and Iran, who have their own reasons to weaponize the group against Trump-era tariffs and multilateral retreat.
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