Xi Calls on BRICS to Do More for Middle East Peace at New Delhi Summit
Chinese President Xi Jinping urged BRICS member states on Saturday to take a more active role in promoting peace and stability in the Middle East and the Gulf, saying China was ready to work with other members of the grouping to help establish peace in a region he described as deeply complex and costly in human terms.
Speaking at the BRICS summit in New Delhi, Xi said the war was inflicting heavy losses on the peoples of the region. He did not single out a specific conflict, but his comments placed the Middle East and Gulf at the center of the bloc's broader agenda.
Xi also warned that power politics are on the rise, the international order is being challenged and shortcomings in peace and security are growing. BRICS nations, he said, must stand on the right side of history.
The BRICS acronym comes from the group's first five members: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia are also members. The group has increasingly presented itself as a counterweight to the West, and China is due to take over the BRICS chairmanship next year.
Xi's trip to India was his first since 2019, and he held a bilateral meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Relations between the world's two most populous countries deteriorated sharply after a deadly 2020 incident involving soldiers from both sides on their shared border in a disputed area of the Himalayas. Ties have improved somewhat since an agreement in 2024.
The New Delhi visit is part of a series of recent diplomatic efforts by Xi, which have also included trips to Kyrgyzstan and Egypt.
For Beijing, the summit offered a platform to project itself as a diplomatic voice on Middle East tensions and to advance its vision of a more multipolar world. But BRICS' expanding membership also brings competing interests, particularly in the Middle East, where Russia, China, India and Iran each have distinct ties and strategic priorities. That complexity may limit how far the group can translate joint statements into a unified role in regional peacemaking.