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Khushboo Razdan

Cao Jiaxuan

Chinese President Xi Jinping concluded his brief trip to India on Sunday with an offer to help Brics members develop open-source AI and smart manufacturing.
Summit host Prime Minister Narendra Modi, meanwhile, warned against turning technology and critical minerals into economic weapons.
Experts said the exchange captured the wider picture of the Brics summit. Two days of diplomacy produced a united front against US tariffs, sanctions and “America first” pressure with a joint declaration, while heads of institutions Washington once dominated sat at a Global South table. Concerns over minerals and technology, however, exposed clear limits to that unity.
Speaking on the second day of the summit in New Delhi, Xi identified open-source AI and smart factories as two out of five key initiatives to promote economic growth and technological development in the Global South.
He also said Beijing would offer to train young talent from other member states in advanced technology and innovation, according to state news agency Xinhua.
The bloc has grown rapidly in recent years and is being increasingly seen as one of the strongest voices for the Global South, as the United States becomes increasingly assertive on the world stage.
Against this backdrop, the Chinese leader also issued a rallying call for unity and cooperation within the bloc to counter geopolitical hostilities and disruptive forces that he warned were shattering the stability of supply and industrial chains.
“A world without rules is like an intersection without traffic lights, where chaos and disorder would be inevitable,” he was quoted as saying by Xinhua.
Global rules should be written jointly and applied equally to all countries without double standards, Xi added. “The logic of might makes right should have been discarded long ago.”


Xi’s offer covered some of the key areas of the rivalry between the US and China, where control of resources and technology is vital.
Open-source models and smart factories require magnets, batteries, chips and processing equipment, and the supply chain of the minerals needed to make them run overwhelmingly through China.
But the US is the key gatekeeper when it comes to advanced chips and chipmaking equipment, and has imposed a series of export controls on the most advanced technology.
That leaves many Global South countries caught between two forms of dependence. While Chinese support could be vital to helping Global South countries develop, many are worried about over-reliance on either Beijing or Washington.
Modi, chairing Sunday’s session, marked that fear without naming either side.
“The weaponisation of technology and critical minerals can hinder our shared progress. Therefore, we have emphasised inclusivity in the adoption of technology,” he said.
India already has first-hand experience of how supply chains can be used to exert economic pressure. After the deadly 2020 border clash between Chinese and Indian troops, fertiliser clearances slowed and supplies of some equipment were held up.
In 2025, when China put rare earth magnets under a global export-licence system during its tariff war with the US, Indian automotive production lines felt the impact immediately.
Xi, who arrived in New Delhi early Saturday afternoon local time, skipped a gala dinner hosted by Modi for Brics leaders. Meanwhile, a social media video posted by Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Sunday captured a relaxed exchange on the summit sidelines between Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov and Araghchi himself.
At one point, as Lavrov was speaking, Wang reached over to look at the badge pinned to Araghchi’s collar.


Analysts said New Delhi’s aim at the summit was simple: preserve Brics unity without letting its internal tensions take centre stage.
Liu Zongyi, a senior fellow at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, said divisions within Brics were natural – given differences in geopolitics, political systems, levels of development and national interests – and had become more pronounced as the group expanded.
Those differences did not prevent cooperation, he argued, saying consensus and divergence shared a “symbiotic and dialectical relationship”.
But geopolitical trust remained a major weakness, Liu noted, particularly between China and India, something he described as “the biggest problem within Brics”.
While members had found broad common ground on development and economic issues at this year’s summit, disagreements over critical minerals reflected India’s efforts to raise issues with China that were difficult to resolve bilaterally, he said.
“India is trying to maintain ties with both sides,” Liu said, citing its cooperation with China and Russia through Brics and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation while avoiding a break with the US and the West.
Liu said Brics cooperation could also give the Global South including China a greater say in shaping international rules in emerging areas such as artificial intelligence (AI) and space.
“Many of the current rules in these fields were shaped primarily by Western countries, with the Global South having limited influence over their formulation,” he said.

If Brics members and other Global South countries worked together to develop new rules, Western countries would have to take their views into account because they represented “huge markets” and “huge numbers of users”, he noted.
Despite US President Donald Trump’s threats of 100 per cent tariffs if Brics nations chose to “play games” with the dollar, the bloc pushed for local currency settlement and linked payment systems to keep trade moving if Washington were to use the dollar as a sanctions or tariff weapon.
However, member states remain divided over how and how much to move away from the US currency.
Lin Minwang, vice-dean at Fudan University’s Institute of International Studies, said differences were inevitable given the members’ varying relationships with Washington.
“Such differences are a natural existence under the current circumstances, and they can only reach consensus through long-term interaction and mutual adjustment,” he said.
Lin said the unanimous adoption of the joint declaration also reflected the impact of US policies.
“The measures of the US government are certainly a very important external stimulus,” he said, citing tariffs, sanctions and the “America first” policy, which he said had “damaged the external environment for development across much of the Global South”.
He said Brics had a role to play in emerging areas where the US and other Western countries were “reorganising” their approach, but its ability to shape new global rules remained limited by “the diversity of interests among member states” and their differences.


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Diplomacy

Bloc united on US curbs but Xi Jinping’s open-source AI pitch and India’s warning on weaponised tech reveal internal friction, analysts say


Bloc united on US curbs but Xi Jinping’s open-source AI pitch and India’s warning on weaponised tech reveal internal friction, analysts say.


Brics summit ends with Xi’s AI offer, Modi’s warning on critical minerals as weapons

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Bloc united on US curbs but Xi Jinping’s open-source AI pitch and India’s warning on weaponised tech reveal internal friction, analysts say

Bloc united on US curbs but Xi Jinping’s open-source AI pitch and India’s warning on weaponised tech reveal internal friction, analysts say