When Jim O’Neill, then head of global economic research at Goldman Sachs, published his influential paper in 2001, he was describing an economic phenomenon rather than designing a political alliance. Brazil, Russia, India and China — “the BRICs” — were rapidly growing economies that were beginning to outpace the Group of Seven advanced economies. O’Neill argued that China was already the world’s second-largest economy and India ranked fourth when measured by purchasing power parity, rather than current prices, at the end of 2000.
“These estimates raise important issues about the transmission of global monetary, fiscal and other economic policies, as well as the need for general international economic and political co-operation,” O’Neill wrote. His argument was that the architecture of global economic governance, particularly forums such as the G7, needed to accommodate the growing weight of emerging nations.
The countries eventually transformed that economic acronym into an institution. The four formalized the BRIC concept through a meeting of foreign ministers in 2006. South Africa joined in 2010 and participated in its first summit in 2011. After more than a decade without further expansion, the group underwent a dramatic enlargement in 2024, when Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates joined, alongside Saudi Arabia, which is treated as a member although it has kept its status ambiguous. Indonesia became the 11th member in 2025. Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and seven other countries also became partners in 2025.
That expansion has changed the scale of the organisation and sharpened a question that will hang over the summit in New Delhi: can a grouping with increasingly diverse political interests convert its growing economic weight into sustained collective action?
The numbers demonstrate why BRICS matters. The 11 members now account for about 40% of global gross domestic product on a purchasing-power-parity basis. The G7’s comparable share has declined to about 28%, not including the entire European Union, although advanced economies still lead comfortably in nominal terms. The figures have helped reinforce the perception that BRICS represents a challenge to the U.S.-led world order.
Yet that was never precisely the political project O’Neill had envisaged. He was later quoted as saying that he “never encouraged them to develop a political club.” The transformation nevertheless gave the countries a platform whose influence now extends well beyond the economic comparisons that inspired its name.
“BRICS has always held itself as a non-Western order,” said Jhanvi Tripathi, associate fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in India. She argued, however, that the grouping concentrates on issue-based discussions and permits targeted cooperation on development issues without necessarily becoming trapped in wider international and bilateral disputes.
The enlarged membership will put that model under greater pressure. As host, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to emphasise practical cooperation, including strengthening the BRICS New Development Bank and increasing trade. But reaching agreement on a joint declaration will be an important test. A meeting of BRICS foreign ministers in May ended without a collective statement because of “differing views among some members”, following disagreements over Middle East conflicts and freedom of navigation.
China’s decision to send President Xi Jinping to New Delhi adds another layer of significance. Xi skipped last year’s BRICS Summit in Rio de Janeiro, and this will be his first visit to India since October 2019. Relations between the world’s two most populous countries have improved, but border disputes remain and the two compete for influence within BRICS and across the Global South.
Raj Kumar Sharma, associate professor at Suleyman Demirel University in Almaty, Kazakhstan, said India wants a stronger BRICS but does not want the grouping to become an instrument of China’s strategic influence.
“This creates a difficult balancing act for New Delhi,” he said.
India’s challenge is consequently broader than managing its relationship with China. Sharma said India’s success as host would depend on whether New Delhi could act as a “bridge builder” between Russia, China and Iran on one side and the West on the other, between competing BRICS members, and between the grouping and the wider Global South.
China’s own ambitions have become increasingly relevant to that equation. Its Global Governance Initiative, unveiled in 2025, promotes a multipolar world order. Chinese leaders present the initiative as a response to “hegemonic politics” and as a means of achieving a more equitable distribution of power among developing nations. The approach dovetails with the China-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which held its leaders summit two weeks ago and presents itself as a bastion of “stability” in an uncertain world.
For newer BRICS members, the proposition has attractions. Indonesia says it supports rebalancing the multilateral system so that developing countries have a greater voice. Malaysia views BRICS as a means of hedging against external shocks by diversifying trade, including amid disruptions associated with Trump-style “America First” protectionism and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Phar Kim Beng, a professor of ASEAN Studies at the International Islamic University Malaysia, traces Global South “disillusionment” with the existing world order even further back, to the war the U.S. launched against Iraq in 2003 and what he described as lackluster efforts by the United Nations.
Yet BRICS itself resembles, in some respects, the institution it is sometimes presented as an alternative to. Mihaela Papa, director at MIT Center for International Studies, said the grouping follows a “United Nations-like model”. “Conflict has always been present within BRICS, and the group has evolved by compartmentalizing cooperation” like the U.N., she said.
The organisation has deliberately remained a loose multilateral platform without a permanent secretariat. Its objective is to translate economic weight into political influence as a “bargaining coalition” within international institutions. “There is continuing interest in the group because it covers many issue areas, creating opportunities for mutual gains,” Papa said.
Energy is one area where those mutual interests have become increasingly tangible. The wars in Ukraine and Iran have altered and accelerated energy dealings among BRICS members. Russia, Saudi Arabia and Brazil have been among China’s top crude oil suppliers since March, according to Kpler data, as the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz disrupted supply and logistics.
Under Western sanctions, Russia is expected to send 60% of its natural gas exports to China by 2030, Moscow’s Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said recently. India’s imports of Russian crude oil also rose to a record high in July.
The Shanghai-based New Development Bank provides another concrete example of the bloc’s institutional development. Operating since 2016, it aims to provide local currency financing to reduce currency risks and losses. Its total financing reached $43 billion in 2025, compared with $29 billion for the Asian Development Bank. The dollar accounted for 60% of the NDB’s total financing at the end of last year, down from 68% as of June 30, 2022, as the lender increased its use of the yuan, euro and rand.
That shift towards multicurrency lending has drawn criticism from U.S. President Donald Trump, who in 2025 threatened additional tariffs on “any country aligning themselves with the anti-American policies of BRICS.” But the warning has not so far altered the bank’s plans.
Papa expects the yuan to play an important role as the NDB gradually develops its multicurrency model, while cautioning that the dollar will not disappear from its operations overnight. “Despite its ambition to expand local currency financing, the NDB needs to maintain efficient day-to-day operations and access to international capital markets, which limits how quickly it can reduce its reliance on the dollar,” she said.
The same tension between ambition and constraint runs through BRICS itself. Its members seek greater digital connectivity and deeper trade cooperation, but their strategic mistrust can restrict the scope of integration. “Members differ significantly in their geopolitical alignments and policy priorities,” Papa said.
China’s economic weight is particularly complicated. “It is a major source of BRICS’ attraction, while at the same time generating asymmetries that can complicate cooperation within the group,” she said.
Modi has some experience of navigating such divisions. At the G20 summit he hosted in 2023, India succeeded in securing a joint statement after language on the Ukraine war was softened. The BRICS summit will take place at the same sprawling Bharat Mandapam complex in the heart of New Delhi where G20 leaders met.
But the political divisions are sharper this time. Many members are strongly critical of Trump and his policies, including Iran, which remains in a military confrontation with the U.S. At the same time, Xi may favour a measured tone as he looks towards an expected visit to the White House on Sept. 24.
For India, the central objective is not to turn BRICS into an anti-Western bloc, analysts say, but to strengthen it as a credible platform for a more representative international order while reinforcing New Delhi’s position as a leading voice.
“With 11 members and greater diversity of interests, New Delhi’s priority is to maintain consensus and prevent the grouping from becoming paralyzed by geopolitical differences,” Sharma said.
Prerna Gandhi, an associate fellow at India’s Vivekananda International Foundation think tank, said New Delhi wants the expanded BRICS to become more useful to the Global South by giving developing countries greater agency in global governance, finance, technology and trade.
From supply chains and energy security to food resilience and AI, Gandhi identified practical areas “where India can demonstrate that BRICS can deliver tangible outcomes, rather than merely issue geopolitical declarations.”
That distinction may define the significance of the New Delhi summit. Twenty-five years after the BRIC acronym was conceived and 20 years after the grouping began to take institutional form, BRICS possesses considerably greater economic weight and a much broader membership. Its challenge is no longer simply whether it can represent the rise of emerging economies. It is whether an increasingly diverse coalition can turn that weight into collective influence without allowing the geopolitical differences among its members to overwhelm the cooperation that brought them together.
