In the world where the developed countries dominate the global economic system and international order, the interests of developing countries have long been ignored. However, driven by globalization, the joint strength of the developing world represented by the BRICS countries has increased considerably, and the “political awakening” of developing nations based on economic progress has become increasingly obvious. Against this background, in 2006, the foreign ministers of Brazil, Russia, India and China held their first meeting during the UN General Assembly, marking the beginning of cooperation among BRICS countries (Ministry of Foreign Affairs PRC, 2024).

The development and evolution of the cooperation mechanism of BRICS, the world’s most influential and iconic South-South cooperation platform have become a microcosm of the rise of the Global South countries that is now reshaping the traditional Western-dominated world landscape. Some Western scholars see the purpose of establishing the BRICS association simply as a way of cooperation adopted by developing countries to counter the developed ones. Zaki Laidi, for example, believed that the core goal of BRICS cooperation was to overthrow the liberal consensus on global governance and its value foundation (Laidi, 2012). Many scholars, Pant H. V. among them, have been pessimistic about the prospects of BRICS, argued that although the BRICS countries have common goals, cooperation between them remains only verbal (Pant, 2013). After years of development, however, there are reasons to hope that, as Zhu Jiejin, Associate Professor with Center for BRICS Studies, School of IR and PA, Fudan University puts it, the BRICS cooperation mechanism is transforming from a “dialogue forum” that “focuses on economic governance and is mainly theoretical” to a “full-fledged mechanism” that “gives equal emphasis to political and economic governance and combines theories with practical work. (Zhu, 2014). The BRICS cooperation mechanism as an innovative form of cooperation has actually become a new paradigm of South-South cooperation (Huang, 2014).

After its successful expansion, BRICS cooperation has entered a new “Greater BRICS Cooperation” era and the differences between the BRICS members have become even larger. How the BRICS countries can integrate resources from all parties, balance the goals of the member states, optimize cooperation mechanisms, and achieve high-quality common development is now the most pressing practical issue. Experts and scholars around the world have sought to assess the possible changes in the international order caused by the expansion of BRICS. Some of them do not expect that such a discordant bloc could be able to create a new world order; yet, the very existence of this strange combination of countries shows there is an appetite for non-Western-led multilateral alignments (Bhatt, 2023). Others believe that, to some extent, the expansion of BRICS means that instead of a rivalry between certain political or economic blocs we are moving towards a global South-North confrontation (Boillot, 2024). Stewart Patrick points out that the grouping’s increasing diversity may make it even harder for BRICS+ to formulate, adopt, and pursue unified policy positions; at the same time, the BRICS+ initial five-country composition may complicate its aspirations to speak for the Global South, further blunting its impact on the global order (Patrick, 2024). C. Raja Mohan suggests that the expansion of BRICS does not mean that the world will enter a post-Western global order as the struggle for global leadership among the BRICS members may outweigh their willingness to work together (Raja Mohan, 2023).

Men Honghua assumes that China attaches great importance to cooperation among the BRICS countries and so it has made strengthening BRICS cooperation a diplomatic priority (Men, 2016). China has long played a constructive role in promoting the development and growth of the BRICS cooperation mechanism. It is therefore essential to answer the question of how China views the “Greater BRICS Cooperation” and new plans for the BRICS+ mechanism design: this is not only related to the long-term development of the association, but also determines whether China can achieve its diplomatic goals.

The discussions about the development of BRICS show that the Chinese and Western scholars seem to have completely different views about the future of BRICS development: Chinese scholars are optimistic, while Western scholars are rather skeptical or, at best, neutral. It is certainly true that the BRICS future will involve both risks and opportunities; the greatest challenge the organization is going to face is how to turn the former into the latter.

The paper seeks to explore two major questions. First, what problems and opportunities will the BRICS countries face after the expansion? Second, as an important participant and advocate for the BRICS, how should China adjust or improve the existing framework to promote further cooperation among the BRICS countries?

Although the new era of “Greater BRICS Cooperation” has created a more favorable external environment for cooperation among the BRICS countries, the subsequent difficulties in upgrading the BRICS mechanism after the expansion, competition among countries outside the region, and lack of depth in existing cooperation have all posed new obstacles to “Greater BRICS Cooperation”.

One difficulty is that not only the number of BRICS members has expanded; the differences between them have also multiplied, and the pressure to coordinate new BRICS policies increased sharply. The BRICS cooperation mechanism is a traditional decision-making model based on consensus, and the basis for policy implementation, too, lies in the consensus reached among its members. The greater the number of the BRICS members, the more difficult it becomes to coordinate policy. An example is the digital economy, one of the three key areas of cooperation among BRICS. Although the BRICS countries have fully realized the strategic importance of the digital economy and successively formulated their own digital development strategies, they still face severe challenges because of differences in conditions and willingness to cooperate. Looking back at the contents of the declarations issued at the six BRICS summits since 2023, one may notice that the emphasis on digital economy at summits held in different countries varied, with the number of words ranging from less than 100 to more than 400 and the number of mentions of digital economy ranging from 1 to 4 times. The biggest contrast is presented by the New Delhi Summit in India, where the final meeting declaration did not mention the digital economy at all. The difference in views on the same issue between the previous and the next rotating presidency reflects the levels of importance that different BRICS countries attach to this issue. The conditions of cooperation are shown in Table 3. Among the nine BRICS countries, the United Arab Emirates have the highest Internet penetration rates, reaching 99%; the Internet penetration rates in China, Russia, Brazil, South Africa and other countries are also over 70%, which is a relatively high level. However, among the new BRICS members, Ethiopia’s Internet penetration rate is only 16.7%, far below the global average of 59.7%. The differences among the BRICS countries in areas such as the “digital divide” limit their actual capability to take joint action.

Second, the informality of the BRICS cooperation mechanism and adversarial efforts of the United States and the Western countries have increased internal and external pressures on BRICS cooperation. The institutional building of the BRICS depends on the gradual growth of political and economic interdependence among the BRICS countries, but the key lies in the consensus of the members on pursuit of their interests. This consensus can transcend the differences between the countries, thereby generating trust in the alliance organization and driving the BRICS rules and regulations (Ren & Yin, 2015). Today, cooperation among the BRICS countries is based on the “non-entity mechanism” dialogue forum model. However, this mechanism of cooperation is actually in a “Three-No” state: no permanent secretariat, no dedicated office and administrative employees, and no specific execution or supervision management entity. In the absence of a comprehensive coordinating and executive agency, the cooperation agenda agreed upon by the BRICS countries can be seriously affected by the differences in willingness and capabilities of its members. An example is cultural and educational exchanges. The BRICS member states, during their respective term of rotating presidency, can organize special activities on their own according to their areas of focus, or create different themes for institutionalized activities. Since the BRICS association adopts a traditional decision-making model based on consensus, the policy implementation cannot be supervised and evaluated effectively. Therefore, when faced with the same issue, the level of implementation depends on the degree of importance that different member states attach to the issue. This kind of informal cooperation has seriously limited the effective actions of the BRICS countries as a whole.

At the same time, institutional competition pressure from the United States and the Western countries is mounting. As shown in Table 4, both the old BRICS countries and the new member states have extensive cooperation with the United States or participate in multilateral arrangements led by the United States. The United States, European and other developed countries continue to pay more attention to Global South countries, strengthening their unilateral cooperation with the BRICS members or increasing participation of the BRICS members in multilateral cooperation mechanisms led by the Western countries, which seek to divide and thus weaken the BRICS grouping.

Third, the BRICS cooperation mechanism lacks horizontal communication and substantial cooperation with developing countries, which will affect the legality and representativeness of the BRICS organizations. The legality and representativeness of the BRICS cooperation mechanism is built on the exchanges and cooperation with developing countries. However, the current content and progress of foreign cooperation in the BRICS countries is still lacking horizontal communication and substantial cooperation with developing countries. As of 2021, a total of 460 international investment agreements have been concluded before the expansion, of which 355 have been signed or entered into force, including 150 with China (128 have entered into force), 85 with Russia (69 have entered into force), 49 with South Africa (19 have entered into force), 46 with Brazil (17 have entered into force), and 25 with India (17 have entered into force). Although an investment network covering the world has been created (Ministry of Commerce PRC, 2023), from the perspective of the countries that China has concluded international investment agreements with, most of the cooperation targets are still developed countries such as the United States, and cooperation with developing countries is limited.

It can be seen from the above analysis that, after the expansion of BRICS membership, the development of BRICS has seen a situation in which advantages and disadvantages coexist.

On the positive side, the improvement of the overall economic strength of developing countries and their increasing willingness and ability to participate in international governance have brought potential development opportunities to the BRICS cooperation mechanism, which mainly targets developing countries in its expansion. At the same time, increased diversity of the BRICS membership, the appeal of international mechanisms established by the U. S. and Western countries, and the shortcomings in the construction of the BRICS mechanisms, have all posed great challenges to the future of BRICS cooperation. In the new era, the BRICS cooperation mechanism has three evolving directions in the foreseeable future: standardization of the BRICS expansion, avoidance of the “spaghetti bowl” effect, and close interaction between new BRICS and other international organizations.

Standardization of the BRICS expansion involves steps to improve the criteria for joining BRICS and strengthen the circle of friends within the BRICS group. In the context of the increasing competition among great powers, joining the BRICS has long been regarded as a signal of standing with China against the United States and other Western countries, while rejecting or exiting the BRICS has also become the best way to show submission to the United States and other Western countries. In the process of this round of BRICS expansion, Argentina pulled out of plans to enter into the expanding BRICS club of nations. This action of Argentina was closely related to the Milei government’s attempt to move closer to the United States ideologically to win its favor. However, reflecting on the BRICS’ handling of the Argentine incident, from the selection of Argentina as the target of expansion, to the signal of Argentine President Milei to withdraw from the BRICS, and then to Argentina’s formal rejection, there are obvious deficiencies in the BRICS countries both in terms of the risk prediction and the response to public opinion after the incident, resulting in an unnecessary negative impact on the international influence and international confidence in the BRICS, and the BRICS urgently needs a set of scientific criteria and procedures for its expansion. However, due to a lack of clear rules and legal procedures, the current procedure of admitting new members can only be carried out through consultation and interaction among all the BRICS member states, and no scientific evaluation criteria are in place for reference (Kipgen & Chakrabarti, 2022). After this incident, the BRICS countries are bound to launch a new round of dialogues and consultations to discuss BRICS members’ entry and exit mechanism and to create a more mature BRICS expansion mechanism.

The second direction is avoiding the “spaghetti bowl” effect and enhancing the coordination and consistency of BRICS cooperation. The so-called “spaghetti bowl” effect originally refers to the different preferential treatment and rules of origin in bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) and regional trade agreements (RTAs), which calls to mind the image of the tangling spaghetti in a bowl (Bhagwati, 1995). It was later used by academia to describe the phenomenon of governance failure caused by the overlap of international policies and rules (Zhou, 2022). The “spaghetti bowl” phenomenon has also existed for a long time in BRICS cooperation. One example is the “Third Pillar” of BRICS cooperation - cultural and educational exchanges. In 2003, Brazil, India and South Africa established the India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) Forum to promote cooperation and exchanges among them. In terms of areas of cooperation, the IBSA Forum mainly focuses on higher vocational education, gender equality, AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria prevention and control, nanotechnology, biotechnology and marine science and technology. However, the IBSA Forum actually has a high degree of overlap with the BRICS, and even competes with it, in terms of the number of member countries and areas of cooperation, adding unnecessary artificial obstacles to the BRICS cultural and educational exchange mechanism (Pu, 2017). As the BRICS cooperation becomes more complex after the expansion, the likelihood of such occurrences will further increase. How to prevent those and improve the overall coordination and consistency of the BRICS mechanism will become an important part of the work of the new BRICS.

The third direction is enhancing BRICS’ international influence and exploring ways to cooperate with other international organizations. The BRICS was initially established to find ways to reform international financial institutions such as the IMF and the WB, with a focus on the economic sphere. After years of development and evolution, BRICS cooperation has long gone beyond the economic sphere. The BRICS countries expand their cooperation in areas such as climate change, non-traditional security, and global governance, and their influence in other fields is constantly increasing. After this round of expansion, the new BRICS has achieved a qualitative improvement in structural powers with security, production, knowledge and finance as its core, and the comprehensive international influence of BRICS has been substantially enhanced. This ever-increasing comprehensive international influence will greatly expand the scope of BRICS cooperation in the world affairs. As a model of diversified and cross-sector cooperation, BRICS can serve as a bridge connecting the global and regional communities. Each BRICS member as an important economy in its own region, can also actively promote regional integration (Lagutina, 2019). How to closely interact with other international organizations and comprehensively enhance the international influence of BRICS has become a new task facing BRICS.

The new era of “Greater BRICS Cooperation” has attracted widespread attention from the Chinese academic community. Regarding how to advance the Greater BRICS cooperation, Chinese academics have put forward a number of ideas, from emphasizing rule building for BRICS cooperation and improving the efficiency of BRICS cooperation decision-making at the macro level, to deepening cooperation in new areas at the micro level. Following the propositions of Chinese scholars on BRICS cooperation and combining the above analysis of the new era of “Greater BRICS Cooperation”, this paper maintains that China should promote “Greater BRICS Cooperation” in the following ways:

First, the BRICS “Three-wheel Drive” cooperation framework, guided by the “Three Global Initiatives” ought to be upgraded. From the perspective of Global Development Initiative, financial cooperation should be used to enhance the role of economic, trade and financial sectors. The BRICS cooperation is deep-rooted in the areas of economy, trade, and finance, with financial cooperation being the foundation for BRICS countries to expand trade and investment. The BRICS countries should make full use of existing conditions to facilitate trade and investment activities, reduce trade and investment barriers, provide financial support for infrastructure building in member states, and restart trade and investment as the two major engines of economic growth (Wang & Liu, 2017). The role of political and security cooperation as a springboard for greater influence on hot international issues should be strengthened. With reference to the BRICS economic cooperation mechanism, building a stronger BRICS political and security cooperation mechanism, support of the establishment of the BRICS working group on international hot issues, the collective participation of BRICS countries in major geopolitical events should be increased, the collective influence of BRICS countries in political security should be enhanced. BRICS ought to play a touchstone role of cultural and educational exchange and cooperation. All the BRICS countries need to cooperate to streamline the relationship between bilateral and multilateral cultural exchanges and cooperation mechanisms among BRICS countries in order to prevent the overlapping and contradictions in exchange mechanisms. It is also necessary to increase the binding force of the BRICS cultural and educational exchange mechanism, further substantiate resource coordination and responsibility sharing, and define the rights, responsibilities and interests of the member countries. It will be crucial to identify priority areas of cooperation, create demonstration projects and invest resources in cultural and educational exchange projects that are effective in consolidating public opinion.

Secondly, the BRICS organization needs to establish criteria for its expansion based on the principles of gradualism, functionality and balance. Gradual expansion should be implemented through phased local cooperation. For countries applying to join the BRICS, a limited probation period can be set up to carry out phased cooperation with them in certain areas. The inspection period will help applicant countries understand the BRICS operation model in advance and also give both sides enough time for the research and analysis necessary to avoid incidents like Argentina’s withdrawal. Functional expansion will be promoted based on whether cooperation benefits can be generated. In the new era of “Greater BRICS Cooperation”, the institutional competition pressure from the United States and other Western countries is increasing. Only when the countries applying to join are in line with the functional positioning and key areas of cooperation of BRICS, can they better leverage the scale and synergy effects of the members, find common interests and generate more cooperation benefits (Xu, 2024), promoting the long-term development of the BRICS cooperation mechanism. No less important will be insisting on balanced expansion based on representativeness. Comprehensive strength is a good criterion for evaluating applicant countries, but the legality of BRICS as a cooperation mechanism representing the interests of developing countries is based on the broad participation of these countries. Therefore, when selecting the new members, it is essential to take into account factors such as geography, economic complementarity and cultural exchange.

Thirdly, the BRICS entity mechanism should be developed internally, and the joint review session of the “last+next rotating presidency” is to be added. The construction of the BRICS entity mechanism should involve establishing the BRICS Cooperation Council of Ministers and Special Advisory Committee. On the one hand, the BRICS Cooperation Council of Ministers will be heading the consulting committee, responsible for submitting relevant policy suggestions to the BRICS Summit for discussion and for executing the resolutions passed by the Summit. On the other hand, the Special Advisory Committee and its subordinate working groups will provide professional policy suggestions for the BRICS Cooperation Ministers Council. The BRICS Cooperation Council of Ministers and the Special Advisory Committee shall take the responsibility for organization and coordination to ensure the smooth implementation of policies (Ding, 2022). The last rotating presidency will be responsible for reporting the situation of the BRICS member states according to the previous agenda to help the current rotating presidency understand the interests of all parties and the details of specific agenda implementation. At the same time, the last rotating presidency will also participate in evaluating the relevant agenda proposed by the current rotating presidency, and give its modification opinion to prevent excessive bias towards the current rotating presidency and maximize the interests of all parties.

Fourthly, the BRICS organization requires establishment of a Regional Cooperation Committee to carry out exchanges and cooperation with other international organizations through the “BRICS+” model. The “BRICS+” model proposed by China in 2017 has become an important way of cooperation between the BRICS and non-BRICS countries. By setting up the BRICS Regional Cooperation Committee, the successful experience of “BRICS+” can be used to expand the cooperation between the BRICS and international organizations. The main role of the BRICS Regional Cooperation Committee is to foster cooperation between the BRICS countries and international organizations in specific regions. The BRICS Regional Cooperation Committee should consist of representatives from the BRICS countries of a specific area. For example, Brazil, as a member of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, can represent the BRICS countries in Latin America and look after the exchanges and cooperation between the BRICS countries and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States. As a representative of South Asia, India can oversee the contacts and negotiations between the BRICS countries and the South Asian Association For Regional Cooperation. As a BRICS country with extensive participation in various international organizations around the world, China should use its strong economic influence to explore the ways of establishing or enhancing cooperation between BRICS and major East Asian countries. The BRICS Regional Cooperation Committee can build a bridge for communication between the BRICS countries and other international organizations.