The 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi is less than a month away. AI governance will figure prominently at the Summit. Converging on AI rules that are politically palatable and economically meaningful for all members of the BRICS will be a herculean task. China, though, enjoys a clear advantage in institutionalising its AI governance framework in the group.
Since the last BRICS summit at Rio in July 2025, much has happened in the global AI landscape. Most noteworthy among these are anxieties expressed over unchecked and runaway growth of AI. Mainstream religious and institutional voices, such as Pope Leo XIV and the UN Chief Antonio Guterres, have been unequivocal in warning of disastrous consequences unless AI expansion is reined in through effective rules. With more and more AI models going rogue, even the Trump administration, which has always favoured a breezy light-touch approach to AI regulations, has begun pondering about controls.
Apprehensions over AI will resonate among the BRICS at Delhi far more powerfully than they did at Rio last year. Some of these were heard at the AI Impact Summit at Delhi in February this year — the first instance of the event being hosted by a country from the Global South. India’s emphasis on rules ensuring inclusive adoption of AI backed by its safe, responsible, and ethical use echoed overarching sentiments of not just the Global South, but also those of middle powers that are wary of getting trapped in the US-China competition for dominating global AI rules.
The blistering pace at which AI is moving, visible through the manic rush over building data centres, producing memory chips, and trade in goods required for these purposes, have left little room for countries to fix rules for regulating the technology. As expected, productivity gains from adoption of AI are till now disproportionately more for the Global North with most of the Global South lagging in AI-ready infrastructure. This makes arriving at globally inclusive rules more imperative than ever before.
The BRICS is well-placed to promote an inclusive rules agenda for the Global South that can be extended to the rest of the world for a greater buy-in. However, most BRICS members, including India, are engaged in regulatory “catch-up” on AI as they lack domestic rules for its governance. The situation is ripe for the US-China rules rivalry to play out over vast unregulated stretches in the Global South. China looks well poised to capture the ground here given the rules connect it has already established with many in the BRICS.
Last month, China formally established the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO). Headquartered in Shanghai, the idea of WAICO was proposed in China’s latest Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) that was endorsed in March this year. The organisation, according to Chinese Premier Xi Jinping, addresses the “call of the Global South” and will aim to create “a shared future in cyberspace”.
The launch of WAICO follows that of the World Data Organization (WDO) by China in March, providing an alternative global data governance framework to countries from the Global South looking for non-US, non-Western global data standards. Both WAICO and the WDO have also been projected as key initiatives for bridging the global digital divide, which, as mentioned earlier, is threatening to reach unbridgeable proportions due to lack of capacities in the wider Global South. China’s efforts to position itself as the key force behind a multilateral effort for establishing inclusive digital governance are also reflected in its active support for implementing the interim arrangements for the WTO’s plurilateral agreement on e-commerce.
China has sensed the strategic opportunity arising from the US reluctance to engage in global digital and AI governance and is eager to capitalise on it. The US preference for lack of coordinated global rules on digital trade and AI is ostensibly due to the difficulties that these can create for long-term commercial prospects of US big tech in global markets, especially in the Global South. The latter, including its prominent members – India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brazil, Egypt, South Africa – are yet to domestically regulate on AI. US pressures for maximizing its business interests might have precipitated regulatory ‘chills’ in some of these countries. At the same time, these countries are also pushing hard on building AI capacities, especially data centres, a significant number of which are funded by the US big-tech. In more other parts of the Global South, especially those embedded in China’ Digital Silk Road, the AI infrastructure push, expectedly, has begun arising from Chinese AI firms, including export of open-access AI products.
What is strategically significant is the buy-in that China’s efforts to globally regulate has gathered among the Global South. WAICO’s founding members include major BRICS members and partners: Indonesia, Malaysia, Ethiopia, South Africa, Brazil, Russia, Belarus, Cuba, and Uzbekistan. The WDO has also been responded to enthusiastically with reports suggesting it has obtained more than 200 members from nearly 40 countries.
The point is not whether Chinese rules are better or worse. Indeed, the scope for such value judgement doesn’t exist as there are no rules to compare the Chinese initiatives with. Critical perceptions suggest China’s efforts to set global rules on AI and data follow from its ambitions to stay ahead in the global digital race and steal a march over US and its allies. That may well be so. But for a Global South abandoned by the US, and barely embraced by Europe and Western middle powers, the Chinese alternative might be the only choice and the least inferior option. That is till the BRICS, or the UN, can arrive at better rules — the prospects of which are rather remote.
Views are personal.
The author is Senior Research Fellow and Research Lead (Trade and Economics), Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore.
Disclaimer: The views expressed are the author’s own and do not reflect the official policy or position of Financial Express.