Chinese foreign affairs authorities said President Xi Jinping would attend the eighteenth BRICS leaders' summit in India. The detailed schedule and any bilateral meetings are to be announced later.

BRICS began around Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa and has taken in additional members over recent years. Since enlargement, the question of how to order the grouping's working arrangements and decision-making has recurred.

Chinese state media have run a series of commentaries marking twenty years of BRICS, discussing the development path of what they term the enlarged grouping and stressing its role in the reshaping of global governance.

Trade settlement, development finance and cooperation on climate and energy are among the subjects cited for the meeting, chaired by India. The agenda has widened as membership has grown.

China and India have continued a recent resumption of economic and people-to-people exchange. India's ambassador to China has described the two as cooperative partners and opportunities for each other's development.

Whether bilateral meetings take place on the margins is a further point of interest, multilateral gatherings being customarily used to settle individual questions as well.