Xi Jinping's Five BRICS Proposals: AI, Trade, and the Global South

At the 18th BRICS Leaders' Summit in New Delhi, Chinese President Xi Jinping used the second plenary session to lay out a five-point agenda for deepening cooperation among the expanded bloc. The proposals, delivered on the morning of September 13, 2026, span artificial intelligence, trade and investment, digital industry, smart manufacturing, and technology talent development. For anyone tracking how emerging markets intend to shape the next decade of global tech governance, this is a signal worth reading closely.

Key Takeaways

• Open-source AI for shared benefit. Xi's first proposal calls for an open-source, inclusive approach to artificial intelligence, framing AI as a public good rather than a proprietary advantage. This positions the bloc as a counterweight to AI ecosystems dominated by a handful of Western firms and their closed models.
• Trade and investment facilitation. The second initiative pushes for smoother cross-border flows of goods and capital among member states. The emphasis is on reducing friction rather than erecting new barriers, which matters for supply chains that increasingly route through the Global South.
• Digital industry cooperation. A third proposal targets joint development of digital industries, from infrastructure to platforms. The underlying logic is that pooled resources let smaller economies compete in sectors where scale usually decides winners.
• Smart manufacturing. The fourth initiative links traditional industrial upgrading with next-generation production. Rather than treating manufacturing as a legacy sector, the framing casts it as a launchpad for emerging and future industries.
• Technology talent cultivation. The fifth proposal focuses on developing skilled workers and researchers. Talent pipelines are often the binding constraint on tech ambitions, so this is less a soft add-on than a structural necessity.
• A "Greater BRICS" with real deliverables. Xi stressed that an expanded BRICS must back its growing weight with concrete, practical cooperation. The phrase "greater BRICS, greater actions" captures the bloc's anxiety about being seen as a talk shop.
• Leveraging emerging-market advantages. The speech explicitly ties BRICS strength to its position across emerging markets and its connections to the broader Global South. That identity is the bloc's main differentiator from older, wealthier clubs.
• Stable supply chains and an integrated market. Xi called for keeping industrial and supply chains stable and open, and for nurturing an integrated market. This is the connective tissue that makes the other four proposals operationally meaningful.

In-Depth Analysis

The five proposals read as a single argument: technology is the new terrain of geopolitical competition, and emerging economies need collective institutions to avoid becoming rule-takers. By leading with open-source AI, the agenda implicitly challenges the model where frontier capabilities sit behind corporate walls and export controls. An open-source framing also lowers entry costs for countries that cannot afford to build foundation models from scratch, which is precisely the constituency BRICS now represents after its expansion.

The sequencing is telling. Trade and investment facilitation comes second, before the more ambitious industrial proposals, because none of the technology goals are achievable without predictable cross-border flows of components, capital, and data. Similarly, pairing digital industry with smart manufacturing acknowledges that many member economies still depend on factory output and cannot leapfrog straight into services. The talent initiative is the long-horizon piece, addressing the shortage of engineers and researchers that quietly caps tech ambitions across the Global South.

What remains unresolved is execution. BRICS has historically struggled to convert communiqués into binding mechanisms, and open-source AI governance in particular raises hard questions about standards, security, and data sovereignty that member states answer differently. Watch for whether these five initiatives produce working groups, funding lines, and shared technical standards over the next two years, or whether they remain declaratory. The real test is not the summit stage but the follow-through, and that is where the bloc's credibility as a technology coalition will be won or lost.

Frequently Asked Questions

What exactly did Xi Jinping propose at the New Delhi summit? He put forward five cooperation initiatives: open-source and inclusive AI, trade and investment facilitation, digital industry cooperation, smart manufacturing cooperation, and technology talent cultivation. Together they form a practical agenda for the expanded BRICS bloc.

Why does open-source AI matter so much in this context? Open-source models lower the cost of adoption for countries with limited research budgets, letting them build local applications instead of licensing foreign systems. It also gives the bloc a shared technical foundation that reduces dependence on a few dominant vendors.

How likely are these proposals to become concrete policies? That depends on whether member states create joint mechanisms, funding, and standards. Past BRICS declarations have sometimes stalled at the implementation stage, so the next two years of follow-up will be the real indicator.

Source: https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_34061033