PM Modi is all set to attend the 17th BRICS Summit in Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro from July 5 to 8. And this year’s summit presents a rare moment, an opening that India is poised to seize. Two of BRICS’ founding members, China and Russia, will be represented not by their heads of state, but by deputies.

President Vladimir Putin, still under the shadow of an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant, is giving the summit a pass. Brazil, a signatory to the ICC, has not offered Russia the guarantees it sought for Putin’s presence. China’s President Xi Jinping, on the other hand, is skipping the summit for reasons far less convincing—and far more telling.

The Chinese leader will not be showing up this time around, making it the first such absence from BRICS in the last 12 years of his presidency. Reports say that it may be because Brazil has invited PM Modi of India for a state dinner following the summit, which means that the India-Brazil relationship will take centre stage at this summit and Xi does not want to appear as “a supporting actor".

This Chinese decision has not been viewed well by the government of Brazil. They see it as a snub. Brazilian officials are said to be displeased by the move. One senior source in Brasília told the SCMP that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had travelled to Beijing in May “as a gesture of goodwill" and in “expectation that the Chinese president would reciprocate" by attending the Rio summit in person.

It also does not help that China’s official reasons simply do not add up. Beijing has cited scheduling concerns, and that it is busy preparing for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Summit which is as late September.

Brazil has raised the example of the BRICS Summit in 2010. At the time, China was grappling with a major earthquake. Still, its leader at the time, Hu........

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