Is India odd man out in China-dominated SCO and BRICS?

With the rise of China as a global economic and military super-power inevitable this decade, India will be the odd man out in the SCO and the BRICS as virtually all the members of these groupings are recipients of copious infrastructure aid from Beijing in the name of Belt-Road Initiative (BRI). Brazil is still to join the BRI but has already received some USD 66 billion in infrastructure investment from China with its Leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva cozying up to President Xi Jinping in Beijing last month.

It is quite evident that China with its economic and political heft will out-gun every member of these two groupings with the strong exception of India and try to impose its own vision of global order on the multilateral groupings. The SCO summit is being hosted by India and the BRICS summit by Brazil in 2023.

While India is pushing for English to be a working language in the SCO apart from Mandarin and Russian, the multilateral institution faces the challenge of Beijing using these platforms for disseminating President Xi Jinping’s vision of international order like the Global Security Initiative (GSI) and Global Development Initiative (GDI).

Fact is that China wanted to introduce President Xi Jinping’s 14-point Thought in the communique of the 2017 SCO summit in Astana, Kazakhstan and the matter was discussed during the SCO Foreign Minister’s Meeting on June 18-19, 2017. India, which was admitted to the SCO formally in 2017, was represented by then Minister of State for External Affairs Gen Vijay Kumar Singh. The idea of introducing President Xi Jinping’s “Thoughts on Socialism with the Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” was dropped after India wanted to introduce cross-border terrorism in the same communique with Pakistan becoming a formal member of SCO that year.

Just as the SCO faces the challenge of becoming China-centric with Russia bogged down in the Ukraine war, the BRICS platform faces the same issues with South Africa recipient of over USD six billion of investment from Beijing as part of the BRI and Russia also recipient of over USD 10 billion BRI investment from the Middle Kingdom.

While India under Narendra Modi is ready to stand alone in both the SCO and BRICS on its convictions but also prepared to converge with fellow members on global good issues, the situation is getting complicated with new SCO members—Iran and Belarus—also part of the Chinese BRI project.

However, according to global watchers, even though the majority of states are part of the Chinese BRI, they have a strong sense of national interest and will take decisions only on the basis of their national interest, particularly power like Russia, not merely based on the aid given by Beijing. The fact that all decisions in SCO and BRICS are taken on consensus is a saving grace.