In BRICS Open-Source AI, China And India Will Make A Good Team

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China, meanwhile, possesses considerable capabilities in AI research, manufacturing, computing infrastructure, telecommunications, robotics and industrial applications. Xi's proposal specifically links open AI cooperation with broader technological and industrial cooperation, including large language models, training and the construction of an open AI ecosystem. Combining these complementary capabilities could create opportunities that neither country could easily realize alone.

India could contribute software expertise, entrepreneurial capacity, digital public infrastructure and applications for a highly diverse and multilingual society. China could contribute manufacturing capabilities, hardware ecosystems, computing infrastructure and experience in large-scale industrial deployment.

The resulting partnership could extend beyond the two countries to other BRICS members and developing economies. Rather than treating AI simply as a domain of technological competition among major powers, India and China could explore whether selected areas of technological co-development could serve broader developmental objectives.

Open AI as strategic autonomy

The emerging AI landscape is increasingly associated with geopolitical competition. Access to advanced semiconductors, computing capacity, cloud infrastructure and sophisticated AI models is becoming increasingly intertwined with national security and strategic power. For countries outside the principal technology blocs, excessive dependence on any single technological ecosystem can create strategic vulnerabilities.

India has explicitly sought to avoid such dependence. Its AI diplomacy has emphasized strategic autonomy, international cooperation and broad accessibility. The New Delhi BRICS Declaration similarly states that international cooperation in enhancing access to AI resources should be accompanied by safety, security, inclusiveness and reliability, while promoting AI science and innovation and leveraging AI for economic growth and social good.

A genuinely international open AI ecosystem could therefore provide developing countries with an additional technological pathway. However, there are concerns in some quarters that replacing one form of technological dependency with another could undermine this objective. Therefore, for an open AI initiative to remain genuinely inclusive, its participation must be broad, its governance transparent, intellectual property questions carefully addressed. Participating countries must retain meaningful autonomy over their own AI policies.

The principle of strategic autonomy is therefore important not only for India but also for the wider Global South. Openness should not simply mean access to technologies developed elsewhere; it should also mean the capacity to participate in their development, adaptation, governance and deployment.

From competition to technological co-development

India–China relations in recent years have been dominated by geopolitical disagreements and strategic competition. Yet international relations need not be reduced to either cooperation or confrontation. Selective cooperation in areas of common interest is possible even when significant differences remain elsewhere.

Climate change, public health, food security and sustainable development have already demonstrated that certain global challenges cannot be effectively addressed through purely national approaches. Artificial intelligence increasingly belongs in the same category. The transnational character of AI technologies, their enormous infrastructure requirements and their potential social and economic consequences make international cooperation increasingly relevant.

A collaborative India–China AI framework could focus initially on areas with clear developmental benefits: agriculture, healthcare, education, climate modeling, disaster management, multilingual translation, smart cities and small and medium-sized enterprises.

Such cooperation would also benefit other developing countries. Indian and Chinese researchers could jointly develop AI systems adapted to Asian and Global South conditions rather than simply importing technological models designed primarily for Western markets.

For example, multilingual AI represents an area in which the linguistic diversity of India and the scale of China's technological ecosystem could create opportunities for research and application beyond conventional English-language models. Similarly, agricultural AI, healthcare applications and climate-related technologies could be designed around the specific socioeconomic and environmental conditions of developing economies.

Such an approach would not necessarily require India and China to establish comprehensive technological cooperation. Rather, it could begin with carefully selected areas in which interests converge and where the developmental benefits are sufficiently clear to justify collaboration.

The need for safeguards

Support for open AI cooperation should not imply that technological openness by itself is sufficient. Artificial intelligence carries significant risks involving misinformation, privacy, cybersecurity, intellectual property, labour displacement and autonomous military applications.

Consequently, an India–China initiative would require robust governance mechanisms. The BRICS New Delhi Declaration already emphasizes AI accessibility together with safety, security, inclusiveness and reliability, while supporting international cooperation on AI science and innovation. It also calls for addressing challenges associated with data security, misinformation, disinformation, deepfakes and other forms of technological misuse.

The objective should be an open, interoperable and pluralistic AI ecosystem, with clear safeguards for data protection, intellectual property, cybersecurity, transparency and human oversight.

Governance would be particularly important because technological openness can create different outcomes depending on institutional arrangements. An effective framework would therefore need clear rules concerning data, model access, intellectual property, research collaboration, cybersecurity and accountability. It would also need to recognize national sovereignty while encouraging sufficient interoperability to allow meaningful international cooperation.

The challenge is to establish an equilibrium between openness and security, technological cooperation and national interests, and innovation and responsible governance.