Brasilia and Beijing sign over 30 agreements, focus on BRICS summit in New Delhi

Brasilia and Beijing during May sealed a package of more than 30 agreements that directly open the door for Chinese companies to invest in Brazilian infrastructure, mines, ports and the artificial intelligence sector. Roughly 70 percent of Chinese direct investment in Brazil over the past eighteen months has gone to sustainable energy and the green transition, Investing.com reported, citing Reuters. In the same week, India hosted the foreign ministers of BRICS countries in New Delhi, with the talks, according to Al Jazeera, inevitably shadowed by the US-Iran war and the finalisation of an agreement with Tehran.

For Serbia, which last year requested observer status in the expanded BRICS format and which is developing a strategic partnership mechanism with Beijing, this is not a distant story. The Belgrade delegation, according to a statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, made contact with the Indian hosts at assistant-minister level, with the intention of using this autumn’s summit in 2026 to open space for bilateral meetings between President Aleksandar Vucic and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. India and Brazil, along with Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, are the main voices in the BRICS framework advocating for Serbia as a non-voting observer.

Xi Jinping’s visit to Brazil, which included the opening of the first phase of the Chinese-financed port at Itacare on the coast of Bahia, marks the largest single transaction in the history of the two countries’ relations. The port development plan, worth 4.3 billion dollars, is supported by a loan from the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and foresees commissioning by 2029. The Brazilian side committed to fiscal incentives for logistics firms that will use the new infrastructure, the daily Folha de Sao Paulo reported.

What the New Delhi BRICS summit has produced so far

The two-day BRICS foreign ministers’ meeting in New Delhi was marked by the absence of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who was in Beijing with US President Donald Trump during his three-week stay in China in mid-May. China was represented in New Delhi by its ambassador to India, Xu Feihong, an arrangement Beijing flagged as a protocol downgrade but which the Indian side interpreted as a signal that Beijing views the summit primarily through the lens of trade with the United States, rather than in opposition to it.

Adam Tooze, professor of history at Columbia University and analyst of global economic policy, said in his regular newsletter that the main result of the summit was “the institutionalisation of BRICS as an infrastructure format, not as an alternative political bloc.” On his reading, India in 2026 chairs the work as part of New Delhi’s strategy of positioning BRICS as a space for reform of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, rather than as a platform for open confrontation with the US and European institutions.

Investment in Brazil, borders in Asia

The Brazilian part of the agenda moves in a clearer economic register. According to Banco do Brasil, Chinese direct investment in Brazil during the first quarter of 2026 totalled 4.7 billion dollars, up 31 percent on the same period last year. The sustainable energy sector, which covers wind farms in north-eastern Brazil and solar parks on the central Brazilian plateau, is the main growth component. Minister of the Environment and Climate Change Marina Silva told reporters in Brasilia that the agreements were “an opportunity, but on condition they follow Brazil’s environmental standards, not China’s,” a careful opening for future disputes over the terms of extraction.

Indian-Chinese border issues remain open but, according to analysts in Brian Wong’s text for China-US Focus, are moving in a register of stabilisation. The Line of Actual Control between the Indian army and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in Ladakh remains under the technical agreement from October 2024, which Modi and Xi confirmed on the margins of last year’s BRICS summit. On current signals, the main BRICS summit in New Delhi, which should bring together heads of state and government, will be scheduled for the second half of September, with the final date expected at the next session of the BRICS coordination committee on 18 June.

For Belgrade, the most important date is 30 June, when Serbia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has scheduled an internal coordination meeting on preparing for possible observer status at the summit. The final format remains the subject of negotiations between New Delhi and other member states.