Chinese President Xi Jinping declined to travel to Rio for the latest BRICS Summit on the reported pretext of scheduling conflicts and having already met with his Brazilian counterpart Luiz Ignacia Lula da Silva twice this year.
The South China Morning Post speculated that the real reason was that Xi didn’t want to be “perceived as a supporting actor” there given the state dinner that Lula will hold for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, however, who’ll be the first Indian premier to visit Brazil in nearly six decades.
Despite the border de-escalation deal that Xi and Modi agreed to during the last BRICS Summit, China and India still remain rivals, which recently manifested itself through reported Chinese support to Pakistan during the latest Indo-Pak Conflict and India’s perception that China is using the SCO against it. Accordingly, with Modi indisputably being the top VIP at the group’s latest annual gathering, it might therefore indeed be the case that Xi felt uncomfortable and thus declined to travel there to attend.
This hypothesis directly leads to the question of why Lula agreed to make Modi’s visit an official state one with an associated dinner despite him traveling there to attend a multilateral event. While it could just be for reasons of protocol considering the historical significance of his visit, Lula might have also calculated that it could expand Brazil’s balancing act from its hitherto mostly binary Sino-US nature into a more complex one through the inclusion of India. That could in turn alleviate some pressure from Trump.
Lula, whose evolution into a liberal-globalist during his third term (as documented in the several dozen analyses enumerated at the end of this one here) led to him closely aligning with Biden, endorsed Kamala right before the last US presidential election and recently told Trump to stop tweeting so much. All of that naturally put him in Trump’s crosshairs precisely at the moment when Brazil and the US are engaged in trade and energy talks whose successful outcome is more important to Brazil than to the US.
As luck would have it, Modi’s decision to attend the latest BRICS Summit in person and thus become the first Indian Prime Minister to visit Brazil in nearly six decades provided Lula with an opportunity to give him a state visit, which might have been responsible for Xi’s absence from the event as was reported. From the US’ perspective, there might indeed be a connection between these two developments, which could ingratiate Lula with Trump if he comes to share that perception at his advisors’ suggestion.
After all, this is the first time that Xi won’t attend a BRICS Summit in any capacity, not even remotely. The resultant optics fuel Western media speculation about China’s commitment to the group, which can manipulate some of the global public’s views regardless of its veracity. This sequence of events – China’s Indian rival (which is still friendly with the US in spite of the US’ latest efforts to subordinate it) visiting Brazil, Xi declining to attend the BRICS Summit, and Western media’s spin – aligns with US interests.
Accordingly, Xi’s absence from the latest BRICS Summit (regardless of the real reason[s] behind it) might stimulate US-Brazilian ties and comparatively reduce China’s role in Brazil’s balancing act if India’s role therein soon becomes more significant, which can altogether be considered a setback for China. To be sure, it’s not a major one and it could potentially be reversed through skillful Chinese diplomacy, but it’s still difficult for any honest observer to describe this outcome as meaningless, let alone a success.
