Why cracks are showing in the 'BRICS wall'

RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin hosts on Tuesday the 2020 BRICS summit with his Brazilian, Indian, Chinese, and South African counterparts. While the bloc increasingly projects itself as a unified forum of key emerging markets, the differences between the five are sometimes just as striking.

Politically, this year has for instance seen rising tensions between the Asian giants of China and India. Bilateral border tensions in Ladakh have worsened in 2020 with at least 20 Indian soldiers killed in June, alone, while clashing with Chinese counterparts whose casualties are unknown.

Indian ministers have had face-to-face meetings with their Chinese counterparts on the border stand-off. However, there appears little prospect of any imminent breakthrough with both sides "digging in their positions" with the onset of the Himalayan winter.