China's Xi Jinping To Miss BRICS Summit For First Time. Here's Why

The 17th BRICS Summit kicked off on Sunday in Brazil's Rio de Janeiro, bringing together leaders from major emerging economies--but without the attendance of one of the top leaders of one of its most powerful members. China's 72-year-old President, Xi Jinping--who has used BRICS to reshape the global balance of power-- will not attend the annual leaders' gathering this year.

This will be the first time since taking power in 2012 that Jinping will be absent from the BRICS stage. Beijing has given no official reason for sending the premier, Li Qiang, to the summit, other than scheduling conflicts.

Jinping's absence from the two-day summit comes at a critical time when BRICS (which owes its acronym to early members Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) will be discussing ways to increase cooperation amid what member countries say are serious concerns over Western dominance. Since 2024, BRICS has expanded to include Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia, Indonesia and Iran.

With some members up against a July 9 deadline to negotiate US tariffs, leaders at the BRICS summit are expected to decry US President Donald Trump's trade policies, saying they are illegal and risk hurting the global economy. 

By missing the summit, Jinping is missing a key opportunity to showcase China as a stable alternative to the US -- an image Beijing has long looked to project to the Global South. 

Putin's Absence

Beijing's closest ally in the grouping, Russian President Vladimir Putin, is also not travelling to Rio de Janeiro for the summit, but he will attend the gathering via video link for the same reason he joined a 2023 BRICS gathering in South Africa remotely. Putin is facing an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant, and Brazil is a signatory to the ICC statute. 

The ICC has accused the Russian leader of being instrumental in abducting and deporting tens of thousands of Ukrainian children. Putin might be avoiding embarrassing the hosts after Mongolia landed in a legal dispute with the ICC for not acting on the warrant when Putin visited last year.

Reason For Absence

However, experts believe that there might be a deeper reason for the absence of two global heavy hitters from Brazil. It may be a sign that the group's recent expansion has reduced its ideological value to the two founding members, according to a report by The Guardian. 

BRICS, which is often seen as the developing world's alternative to the G7 group of nations, has undergone rapid expansion recently. In this process, it has diluted its coherence as a body offering an ideological alternative to Western capitalism represented by the G7, the report said. 

Chong Ja Ian, an associate professor at the National University of Singapore, told CNN that BRICS may not be "his greatest priority" for Xi Jinping, as he focuses on steering China's domestic economy. Beijing may also have low expectations for any major breakthroughs at this year's summit, he said.

China is also in the midst of economic challenges at home in the face of trade friction with the US. Another reason for Jinping's absence could be a heightened focus on domestic issues, with the Chinese President busy charting a course for the five years ahead of a key political conclave expected this year, according to the CNN report. 

Changing Dynamics 

Launched in 2009, BRICs positions itself as the Global South's answer to the Group of Seven (G7) major developed economies. But with the addition of new members--all of which are in various stages of economic development and with varying levels of antagonism towards the West-- BRICS has skewed towards autocracies, leaving Brazil, South Africa and India uneasy.

Brazil, which is fast emerging as a diplomatic powerhouse in the global south, would not want the focus of the summit to be solely on criticism of Western double standards in the Middle East and Ukraine, as it wants the body to champion a theme of inclusive global governance reform. 

Officially, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's government is hoping to guide the discussion toward concrete themes-- the green energy transition, cooperation on vaccines, and expanding the most-favoured nation status to all countries in the World Trade Organisation--leaving little room for Beijing's agenda to flourish. 

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