Why The West Misunderstands BRICS And Why China Shouldn’t Celebrate Just Yet

BRICS is often described in the West as either a paper tiger or an anti-Western bloc ready to overturn the global order. Both interpretations miss the point. The group is better understood as a loose, expanding platform where major emerging economies bargain for influence, hedge against Western-dominated systems, and test alternatives without fully committing to one leader or ideology.

That makes BRICS more consequential than its sceptics admit, but also less useful to China than many celebratory narratives suggest. The real story is not that BRICS has already replaced Western power. It is that the dissatisfaction behind BRICS is real, while the coalition built around it remains fragmented, cautious, and difficult to command.

What Does the West Misunderstand About BRICS?

The main misunderstanding is treating BRICS as a single geopolitical actor. BRICS is not NATO, the European Union, or a formal anti-dollar army. It is a flexible diplomatic club whose members share frustration with the distribution of global power, but not always with one another’s priorities, alliances, or risk tolerance.

That difference matters. When Western commentary asks whether BRICS is ‘winning’ or ‘failing’, it often applies the wrong test. BRICS does not need to become a military alliance, common market, or currency union to matter. Its influence comes from convening power, agenda-setting, symbolic legitimacy, and its ability to normalise ideas that once sat outside mainstream global governance debates.

A few BRICS facts help ground the discussion. The group began with Brazil, Russia, India, and China before South Africa joined, and official BRICS materials now describe an expanded eleven-country grouping that includes Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. The same official overview presents BRICS as a forum seeking reform of international economic and financial governance, particularly after the 2008 financial crisis, rather than as a treaty-based bloc with binding supranational authority.

This is why the West often talks past the issue. If BRICS is judged only by whether it can immediately replace the G7, the US dollar, or the Bretton Woods institutions, it looks exaggerated. If it is judged by whether it gives large non-Western states a recurring platform to coordinate positions, expand financial tools, and claim a stronger voice for the Global South, it looks much more serious.

The West Often Underestimates the Grievance Behind the Platform

One reason BRICS analysis in the West can feel dismissive is that it focuses on the group’s contradictions while paying less attention to the grievances that hold it together. Many developing and emerging economies believe global institutions still reflect an older distribution of power. They see Western states retaining disproportionate influence over finance, sanctions, standards, ratings, investment flows, and security narratives.

That does not mean every BRICS complaint is equally persuasive. Nor does it mean BRICS members offer a cleaner or more democratic alternative. However, the appeal of BRICS is not built only on admiration for China or Russia. It is also rooted in frustration with a system that many countries experience as selective, slow to reform, and quick to discipline weaker states.

Official BRICS language repeatedly emphasises reform of global governance, greater representation for emerging markets and developing countries, and a more inclusive international order. The 2025 Rio de Janeiro declaration, for example, reaffirmed multilateralism and supported reforms in development finance and trade governance, while also welcoming efforts to expand local currency financing through the New Development Bank.

For Western policymakers, this is the first uncomfortable lesson: BRICS gains traction when Western-led systems appear closed, conditional, or politicised. Even countries that do not want to align with Beijing may welcome a forum that increases their bargaining power with Washington, Brussels, London, Tokyo, and multilateral lenders.

The Second Mistake Is Mistaking Diversity for Weakness Only

Western critics often point to BRICS divisions as proof that the group cannot matter. The divisions are real. India and China compete for influence. Brazil and South Africa often prefer reformist multilateralism over sharp confrontation. Russia and Iran face heavy Western sanctions and want more explicit anti-Western alignment. Gulf members bring capital and energy influence, but they also maintain deep relationships with Western security and financial systems.

Yet diversity can be both a weakness and a strength. BRICS is attractive precisely because it does not demand full ideological alignment. A country can join or engage with BRICS to support local currency settlement, development finance, food security cooperation, or institutional reform without signing up for every Chinese or Russian geopolitical objective.

This loose structure lowers the cost of participation. It allows states with different systems and strategic preferences to sit in the same room. It also lets them signal dissatisfaction with the West without necessarily burning bridges with it.

That is one of the more important BRICS insights: the group’s ambiguity is part of its design. It gives members room to cooperate where interests overlap and avoid areas where they do not. Western institutions often value rules, obligations, and enforcement. BRICS often values optionality, symbolism, and parallel channels.

The result is not a disciplined bloc, but it is not meaningless either. A coalition does not need to agree on everything to shift the conversation. If enough members repeat the same themes — reform, multipolarity, local currencies, and development sovereignty — those themes gain diplomatic weight.

BRICS Is Not Just About China, Even When China Is Central

China is the largest economy in BRICS and the most powerful state in the grouping. It has an obvious interest in using BRICS to amplify its global role, challenge US dominance, and present itself as a champion of developing countries. However, the idea that BRICS is simply a Chinese project is too simplistic.

Brazil has long used BRICS to pursue a more multipolar diplomatic identity. India uses it to preserve strategic autonomy and maintain a voice in non-Western forums while still working with the United States, Japan, Australia, and Europe in other settings. South Africa values the platform for African representation and South-South cooperation. Newer members bring their own regional ambitions, economic needs, and hedging strategies.

This matters because China cannot assume that BRICS enlargement automatically translates into Chinese leadership. Members may accept Chinese investment, trade, and diplomatic support, but they also worry about dependency. Many want a less Western-dominated order, not a China-dominated one.

That distinction is often lost in Western debate. A country can oppose US sanctions policy, support World Bank reform, trade heavily with China, and still resist becoming part of a Chinese sphere. BRICS creates space for that kind of middle position.

De-Dollarisation Is Real, but It Is Slower Than the Slogans Suggest

No part of the BRICS debate attracts more exaggeration than the dollar. Some commentators claim the dollar is about to collapse. Others argue that nothing meaningful is changing. A better BRICS analysis sits between those extremes.

BRICS members and partners have strong reasons to explore local currency trade and alternative payment channels. They want to reduce transaction costs, manage sanctions exposure, develop domestic financial markets, and avoid excessive vulnerability to US monetary policy. Official BRICS documents have encouraged the use of local currencies in financial transactions among BRICS countries and their trading partners.

However, reducing reliance on the dollar is not the same as replacing it. The dollar remains deeply embedded in trade invoicing, debt markets, reserve management, commodity pricing, and global banking infrastructure. According to the IMF’s COFER data brief for the first quarter of 2026, the US dollar accounted for 57.13 per cent of reported global foreign exchange reserves, up from 56.42 per cent in the previous quarter.

That figure does not mean the dollar is invincible. Its reserve share has declined over the long term from earlier peaks, and many countries are diversifying. However, it shows why dramatic claims about an imminent BRICS currency revolution are misleading.

The practical picture is more modest:

1. More local currency settlement is likely. Countries that trade heavily with one another can reduce some dollar use at the margins.
2. A single BRICS currency remains unlikely in the near term. Members do not share a central bank, fiscal union, common political authority, or aligned inflation and exchange-rate preferences.
3. The renminbi faces its own constraints. China’s capital controls, legal system concerns, and policy opacity limit global willingness to hold the currency at dollar-like scale.
4. Payment alternatives can grow without replacing SWIFT. Parallel systems may provide resilience, but network effects still favour established infrastructure.
5. The dollar can lose share gradually without losing dominance suddenly. Currency power usually erodes through long institutional shifts, not slogans.

This is where both Western complacency and BRICS triumphalism fail. The West should not assume dollar centrality is permanent. China should not assume dissatisfaction with the dollar automatically creates trust in the renminbi.

The New Development Bank Shows Both Promise and Limits

The New Development Bank is one of BRICS’ most concrete achievements. Unlike vague summit language, it is an institution with a development mandate, members, lending operations, and a clear symbolic purpose: demonstrating that emerging economies can create their own financial tools.

Official BRICS materials describe the NDB as a bank created to mobilise resources for infrastructure and sustainable development in BRICS and other emerging market and developing economies. They also note that its membership has expanded beyond the founding BRICS states to include countries such as Bangladesh, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt.

The bank matters because infrastructure finance remains a major need across the Global South. If BRICS can offer financing with fewer political conditions, more local currency options, and faster responsiveness, it can become a useful complement to existing lenders. It does not have to replace the World Bank to remain relevant.

At the same time, the NDB is not a magic wand. Development banks need credit ratings, capital, project pipelines, governance standards, repayment discipline, environmental safeguards, and risk controls. Lending in local currency can reduce borrowers’ exchange-rate risk, but it also requires deep local capital markets and careful balance-sheet management.

The NDB’s own messaging emphasises local-currency borrowing and lending as a defining feature of its strategy, and its president has discussed expanded local-currency targets for the next strategic cycle. That is meaningful, but it also confirms that the shift is a managed institutional goal, not an overnight escape from dollar finance.

For China, the lesson is blunt. BRICS institutions gain legitimacy when they look multilateral, professional, and useful. They lose legitimacy if they appear to be vehicles for Chinese preferences alone.

Why China Should Not Celebrate Just Yet

China has reasons to welcome BRICS expansion, but it should be careful about overreading the moment. A larger BRICS gives Beijing more diplomatic visibility, more opportunities to promote multipolar language, and more partners interested in alternatives to Western-dominated systems. Yet a bigger BRICS is also harder to steer.

The expanded group includes countries with different security partners, monetary needs, domestic politics, and threat perceptions. Some want protection from sanctions. Some want development finance. Similarly, some want energy coordination. Some want prestige. Others want leverage in negotiations with the West. These goals overlap, but they are not identical.

China’s strategic problem is that BRICS enlargement increases both scale and friction. The more members the group includes, the more carefully communiqués are drafted. The more diverse the group becomes, the harder it is to turn broad slogans into binding action.

There are several reasons China should avoid premature celebration:

• India will not accept a Chinese-led order. India participates in BRICS, but it also competes with China and protects its own strategic autonomy.
• Brazil and South Africa often prefer reform over rupture. They may support a fairer global order without endorsing open confrontation with the West.
• Gulf states hedge rather than defect. Saudi Arabia and the UAE can engage with BRICS while maintaining Western financial, defence, and investment ties.
• Russia and Iran can make BRICS look more confrontational. That may help anti-Western messaging, but it can also make cautious members uncomfortable.
• Smaller and newer participants want agency. They did not join simply to exchange Western dominance for Chinese dominance.

This is the paradox of BRICS for Beijing. The group is valuable because it is broad. However, because it is broad, it cannot easily become China’s obedient geopolitical instrument.

The India Factor Complicates Every Simple Narrative

Any serious BRICS analysis has to place India near the centre. India is not a side character in BRICS. It is a demographic, economic, technological, and diplomatic heavyweight with its own civilisational narrative and strategic ambitions.

India benefits from BRICS because the platform supports its long-standing preference for strategic autonomy. It can cooperate with Russia on defence ties, compete with China in Asia, deepen ties with the United States, participate in the Quad, and still speak the language of Global South reform. That flexibility is not accidental. It is the essence of India’s foreign policy posture.

For the West, this means India’s BRICS membership should not be read as anti-Western alignment. For China, it means BRICS cannot be assumed to validate Chinese leadership. India will support initiatives that serve Indian interests and resist those that appear to institutionalise Chinese dominance.

This dynamic shapes debates over currency, technology, supply chains, and institutional reform. India may support more local currency trade in principle, but it has little reason to champion renminbi internationalisation as the answer. India may support more Global South representation, but not if the practical result is a hierarchy with China at the top.

The India factor is one of the strongest arguments against simplistic Western panic. It is also one of the strongest arguments against Chinese triumphalism.

BRICS Expansion Creates Legitimacy and Coordination Problems

Expansion gives BRICS a larger global footprint. Official Brazilian central bank materials state that the expanded group represents about 49 per cent of the world’s population, 36 per cent of territory, 39 per cent of global GDP, and 23 per cent of international trade.

Those numbers help explain why the group cannot be dismissed. A forum representing that much population and economic weight can influence debates on trade, development finance, energy, climate, technology, and institutional reform. Even when it lacks binding authority, it can shape expectations.

However, expansion also raises hard questions. What criteria should determine future membership? How should BRICS balance geographic representation? How should it handle applicants that are under sanctions, involved in regional conflicts, or closely tied to rival powers? Similarly, how can it preserve consensus if members disagree on wars, debt, climate obligations, or security alignments?

The creation of a partner-country category during the 2024 Kazan Summit reflects this tension. It allows BRICS to widen its network without immediately absorbing every interested state as a full member. Official BRICS materials describe the partner category as a way to structure engagement beyond full membership.

This is practical diplomacy, but it also shows the limits of expansion. A larger BRICS can project momentum. Yet if it grows too quickly without institutional clarity, it risks becoming a stage for speeches rather than a platform for implementation.

The West Confuses Anti-Western Rhetoric With Anti-Western Alignment

Some BRICS members use sharp anti-Western language. Russia and Iran, in particular, have strong incentives to frame BRICS as part of resistance to US and European pressure. China also benefits from presenting itself as a leader of a more multipolar world.

But rhetoric does not equal alignment. Many countries in and around BRICS are not trying to exit the Western-led economy. They want better terms within it, more alternatives beside it, and more protection against coercion from it.

This distinction is crucial. The United Arab Emirates can participate in BRICS while remaining a major global finance, logistics, and investment hub connected to Western markets. Brazil can support BRICS while maintaining trade and diplomatic relationships across ideological lines. India can sit in BRICS and still expand strategic cooperation with Washington.

Western strategy often suffers when it treats all BRICS engagement as hostile. That approach can push swing states closer to China and Russia by making neutrality feel impossible. A smarter approach would separate hard security threats from legitimate demands for representation, liquidity, infrastructure finance, and institutional voice.

Not every BRICS statement should trigger alarm. However, every recurring BRICS theme should be studied carefully, because repeated dissatisfaction is how alternative institutions begin.

China’s Leadership Problem Is Trust

China’s biggest obstacle inside BRICS is not economic size. It is trust. Many countries want access to Chinese markets, infrastructure finance, technology, and diplomatic backing. Fewer want to become dependent on Beijing’s political preferences.

This trust problem has several layers. China is admired by some for its development record, state capacity, and long-term planning. It is viewed more cautiously by others because of debt concerns, trade imbalances, territorial disputes, industrial overcapacity, surveillance technology, and the opacity of its political system.

In BRICS, this means China must constantly balance leadership with reassurance. If it pushes too hard, it confirms fears of domination. If it stays too passive, it cannot turn BRICS into a coherent strategic platform.

The currency question illustrates the dilemma. China may welcome reduced dollar dependence, but many BRICS members do not want the renminbi to become the new centre of gravity. They prefer a plural system: more local currencies, more swap lines, more regional arrangements, and more optionality.

That is not a defeat for China, but it is a ceiling. BRICS can help China dilute Western influence. It cannot automatically deliver Chinese primacy.

The Most Useful Way to Read BRICS Is as a Hedging Machine

BRICS is best understood as a hedging machine for a fragmented world. It lets members prepare for a future in which US power remains strong but less uncontested, China rises but remains mistrusted, and global institutions reform slowly or unevenly.

For middle powers and emerging economies, hedging is rational. They do not want to choose one camp permanently. They want room to manoeuvre if sanctions expand, supply chains split, climate finance disappoints, debt pressures rise, or technology standards become politicised.

BRICS offers several forms of hedging:

• Diplomatic hedge: Members gain a platform outside Western-led forums.
• Financial hedge: Local currency tools and the NDB provide partial alternatives.
• Narrative hedge: Leaders can appeal to domestic audiences by demanding a fairer global order.
• Strategic hedge: States can engage China and Russia without fully abandoning Western ties.
• Institutional hedge: The group can test new mechanisms without committing to deep integration.

This is why BRICS can matter even if it remains loose. In a world of uncertainty, optionality has value. The West often underrates this because it looks for formal commitments. China may overrate it because it mistakes optionality for loyalty.

Better BRICS Analysis Starts With Five Questions

To avoid another BRICS misunderstanding, analysts should stop asking only whether BRICS will ‘defeat’ the West. That question is too dramatic and not very useful. Better questions focus on where the group can produce incremental change.

A more grounded framework would ask:

1. Where do members have overlapping material interests? Local currency settlement, infrastructure finance, agricultural trade, energy cooperation, and institutional reform are more plausible than a shared foreign policy.
2. Which initiatives survive beyond summit language? Institutions, funded projects, payment pilots, and repeat Ministerial work matter more than slogans.
3. Which members are driving which agenda? China, India, Brazil, Russia, South Africa, and newer members do not always want the same outcome.
4. How do non-members respond? BRICS’ influence grows when outside countries imitate its language, seek partner status, or use it as leverage in other negotiations.
5. What trade-offs are members avoiding? If a proposal requires members to sacrifice monetary sovereignty, alienate key partners, or accept Chinese hierarchy, it will face resistance.

This framework produces better BRICS insights because it treats BRICS neither as fantasy nor as destiny. It recognises that influence can accumulate slowly through habits, networks, institutions, and repeated claims.

What the West Should Do Differently

The West does not need to panic about BRICS, but it does need to listen more carefully. Dismissing the group as incoherent may feel satisfying, yet it avoids the deeper issue: many countries are looking for alternatives because they believe existing systems do not serve them well enough.

A better Western response would include practical reforms rather than lectures. That means supporting meaningful representation for emerging economies in global institutions, improving development finance, reducing the perception that rules are applied selectively, and offering infrastructure and technology partnerships that are easier to access.

It also means avoiding a binary diplomatic style. If Washington or Brussels treats every BRICS participant as suspect, it strengthens the argument that the West cannot tolerate independent foreign policy. That is exactly the narrative China and Russia want to promote.

The West should compete by making its own institutions more credible. It should also engage BRICS members individually, because their interests differ. India is not Iran. Brazil is not Russia. South Africa is not China. The UAE is not Ethiopia. Good strategy begins by recognising those distinctions.

The strongest Western answer to BRICS is not mockery. It is reform, seriousness, and attractive partnership.

What China Should Do Differently

China’s temptation is to view BRICS expansion as proof that history is moving in its favour. There is some truth in that. The world is becoming more multipolar, and many countries want more room outside Western preferences.

However, if China wants BRICS to become more than a symbolic amplifier, it has to accept constraints. It must let other members shape the agenda. It must support institutions that look genuinely multilateral. Similarly, it must reduce fears that economic cooperation will become political dependence.

That requires patience. China may gain more by presenting BRICS as a platform for shared agency than as evidence of a Chinese-led world order. The more Beijing celebrates itself as the centre, the more it risks alienating the very partners that give BRICS legitimacy.

China also needs to understand that dissatisfaction with the West is not the same as affection for China. Many BRICS members want leverage, not allegiance. They want alternatives, not a new dependency.

If China forgets that, BRICS expansion could become a diplomatic mirage: impressive in summit photographs, frustrating in negotiations, and limited in strategic payoff.

The Real Significance of BRICS Is Neither Collapse Nor Conquest

BRICS is not about to replace the West as the operating system of the global economy. It is also not an empty acronym. Its significance lies in the space between those claims.

The group gives emerging and developing countries a way to challenge the legitimacy of inherited power structures. It gives China a stage, but not a throne. It gives Russia and Iran a way to resist isolation, but not full control over the agenda. Similarly, it gives India, Brazil, South Africa, and newer members a way to hedge, bargain, and diversify their options.

That is why the debate needs more precision. The West misunderstands BRICS when it sees only contradiction and misses the demand for reform. China should not celebrate just yet because the same diversity that makes BRICS globally appealing also prevents it from becoming a disciplined Chinese-led bloc.

The best conclusion is simple: BRICS is powerful as a signal, useful as a platform, limited as an alliance, and unpredictable as it expands. Anyone who treats it as either a joke or a finished revolution is likely to be surprised.

Also Read: BRICS Expansion Explained: Full List Of 11 Member Nations, GDP Share And How It Affects You