Conflicts, strategic divergences and the survival of economic groupings: Will China–India rivalry make BRICS obsolete?

Abstract

This article probes the viability and survival of BRICS in the context of intensified China–India conflicts and strategic divergences. It argues that occasional eruptions of serious tensions in China–India relations, underpinned by their 1962 border war, threaten to make BRICS an ineffective or weak organization. The article shows that the threats to BRICS’s effectiveness as a new economic grouping originate from both countries’ strategies and counter-strategies to outperform and outbid each other in a number of critical geopolitical areas, most importantly South Asia, and the Indian Ocean Region. The absence of liberal institutional geoeconomic strategies in their bilateral relations to generate meaningful cooperation for mutual gains further exacerbates their conflicts, with clear implications for BRICS. The article discusses three policy implications for BRICS to function as an effective new economic grouping of the Global South—institutional reforms, a shift from geopolitical to liberal institutional geoeconomic strategy of cooperation, and a coordinated policy approach to global political and economic issues.