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Southeast Asia’s deepening ties with BRICS signal a move to diversify partnerships and amplify their voice in global governance. With Indonesia joining it and Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam showing interest, leaders see BRICS as a platform for multilateralism, South-South cooperation, and economic reform – rather than a turn against the West. At a time of shifting power and US unpredictability, the bloc offers opportunities in trade, development finance, and local currency use, while ASEAN members work to balance these links with their own regional cohesion.
When Southeast Asia, though Indonesia, took its first seat at the BRICS table in January 2025, the typical question followed: Is it, along with would-be members Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam, crossing over to the anti-Western side?
This narrative, while not new, was much more headline-grabbing because BRICS’ annual summit took place as many countries, including those in Southeast Asia, were scrambling to offer concessions to reduce the pain from US President Donald Trump’s unilateral tariffs.
But rather than looking for sides when these are unraveling in the fractured global order after World War II, it is more useful to ask: What do Southeast Asian countries want from BRICS’ menu at its non-Western table, and what do they bring to it?
“We’re not talking about complaining and lamenting those who believe in unilateral actions of tariffs, of protectionism,” Anwar told the BRICS Business forum, held on the sidelines of 6-7 July 2025 BRICS summit. “Here we have a voice for multilateralism, for collaboration, working with countries in the South, but still engaging with the countries of the North as friends in this new alliance.”
“But we want to make sure that we speak from the position of strength, not ex-weak, ex-colonial countries, but as independent countries with a certain position,” he said.
For his part, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto, attending his first BRICS Summit, proposed that his country act as a bridge builder between the Global North and the Global South.
Indonesia’s entry into the 11-member BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa plus newer members Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) marks its eastward trajectory. Indonesia is first Southeast Asian member of this loose alliance from the Global South, which was formed in 2006 and held its first summit three years later. Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam are among its 10 partner countries.
Apart from Prabowo and Anwar, Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh attended the Brazil summit. Thai Foreign Minister Maris Sangiampongsa spoke at the meeting of BRICS ministers of foreign affairs in April 2025.
All the developing Southeast Asian countries that are in BRICS or seeking to be in it, with commitments to independent, autonomous yet flexible foreign policies, have had similar messaging around the need to reshape multilateralism and the system of global governance – at a time when emerging economies like China and India, and no longer western and advanced ones, are the ones driving global economic growth.
They want a rebalancing of power in the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and the United Nations Security Council, which are part of the political and economic architecture set up by the West eight decades ago, and see these reflect their priorities too. They want to carry on after the US’ retreat from the multilateral order. They want to be in coalition with other developing countries about markets, investments and expertise.
It is already in the DNA of ASEAN – which Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam belong to – to be comfortable talking to anyone and everyone, and interacting with rival powers. From this viewpoint, BRICS is not unfamiliar territory.
Moving toward BRICS “reflects Southeast Asia’s growing interest in engaging with the Global South, which they view as emerging economies seeking greater voice in global governance,” said Joanne Lin, senior fellow and coordinator of the ASEAN Studies Centre at the Singapore-based ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute. “This aligns with ASEAN countries’ longstanding practice of participating in overlapping institutions to diversify partnerships and hedge against power rivalry.”
For Southeast Asian countries, diversifying relationships and going multi-directional is a top – and smarter – priority especially after being hit by Trump’s tariffs, with little consideration for whether they are allies, free-trade partners, among the poorest nations or in conflict. The costs of their deals to get tariff rates down to 19% to 25% are not fully known, but Vietnam is reported to have given the US zero-tariff access to its market.
Prabowo made a pitch for a “South-South economic compact” that would give Global South countries more access to trade and better integration into global supply chains. Anwar called for more trade between BRICS and ASEAN, which Malaysia chairs in 2025.
Developing countries have also seen how the US has been turning its back on global mechanisms that matter to them. Apart from Trump’s repeat pullout from the Paris Agreement on climate, the US has walked away from the Loss and Damage Fund, which was designed as compensation for damage to poor countries. It has withdrawn from UNESCO, UN Human Rights Council and World Health Organization, adding to the UN’s funding crisis at it turned 80 this year.
The only other multilateral game in town
“With the US-dominated global multilateral system dead in the water, many in the Global South are scouting around for alternative sources of economic and political assistance,” said Walden Bello, board co-chair at the Bangkok-based Focus on the Global South and international adjunct professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Binghamton. Among these alternatives is BRICS, which he said is “backed by something that the G77, for all its virtues as a site alliance-building for the developing countries, lacks: economic clout.”
That clout comes from China, whose economic resources make it the major driver inside BRICS. It is world’s second biggest economy, and one that Southeast Asia already knows very well.
China is the biggest trading partner of more than 120 countries, including Indonesia, Malaysia Thailand and Vietnam. It is ASEAN’s largest trading partner.
“It is not, as some of the pundits would like to claim, about Malaysia choosing a side (by deciding to join BRICS),” Anwar said . "It is about a clear-sighted recognition of the geopolitical and geo-economics changes that are happening around us and expanding our options.”
“I think there is a strong sense of drift that affects them with the unraveling of the old multilateral order under Trump, with the WTO (World Trade Organization) non-functional and the World Bank and IMF resistant to internal reform in terms of giving the Global South more voting shares, and the US resorting to unilateralism and brazen self-interest to achieve its ends and with disdain for its traditional allies,” Bello said in an interview. “The BRICS is the only other multilateral game in town, so it’s seen as a possible source of stabilizing a world that is plunging into disorder.”
“Joining or aligning with BRICS is a strategic move to build resilience and secure alternative avenues for growth,” Lin explained, particularly at a time of geopolitical uncertainty, US-China competition and the unpredictability of Trump’s foreign and trade policies.
She added: “What Southeast Asians countries hope to gain is not simply a counterweight to the West or China, but tangible cooperation on development financing, trade facilitation and technology transfer.”
Among the attractive items on BRICS’ menu is its New Development Bank, a 10-year old multilateral bank set up to be similar the World Bank, but for the South. Focusing on six areas from “social infrastructure” to clean energy, it has put in 39 billion dollars for 120 projects. While this is a tiny amount compared to the World Bank Group’s lending commitments of 144.7 billion dollars in 2025, the BRICS bank has other key differences from the World Bank and other similar multilateral institutions.
Each of the New Development Bank's five founding members – Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa – has equal voting shares of 20% of the bank's founding capital regardless of size of population or GDP. There is no single biggest shareholder in the BRICS bank. This is in contrast to the World Bank, where the US remains the largest shareholder, and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, where China is the largest shareholder.
Engine of growth, but weak power
Countries of the Global South, which make up majority of the world’s population, have long called for a different way of doing development. They have been seeking reforms to fix the misalignment between the emerging economies’ growing share of the world economy and their inadequate representation in the WB and IMF, which dominate financing for development in the world.
BRICS’ member countries account for 40.2% of the world’s GDP (measured at purchasing power parity) and over 40% of the world’s 8 billion population.
Their growing contribution reflects the change in the global economic map since the end of World War II, when the US’ huge economic and political footprint drove it to underwrite the international architecture. But while it made up 40% of global GDP in the 1940s, it now accounts for some 26% (going by figures used by Singapore Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan to explain the change in global order).
Jim O Neill, a British economist who coined the acronym ‘BRIC’ (then without South Africa) in 2001, asked: “To me now, it's just idiotically, blatantly obvious. How can you solve truly global issues if you don't have the countries that are driving global growth sitting at the table?”
Together, the 11 BRICS member countries hold 20% of voting rights in the World Bank, compared to 39.76% for the G7 industrialized countries.
Local currencies please
Of major interest too is BRICS’ commitment to increasing the use of countries’ local currencies in development finance - and in trade among developing nations. One of the BRICS bank’s goals for the period 2022-2026 is to reach 30% of total financing in local currencies – and not the US dollar, the dominant currency in foreign reserve holdings and trade.
This calls to Southeast Asian countries, since ASEAN is deep in its own efforts to use local currencies to deepen regional integration. For instance, Southeast Asian nations may connect with China’s Cross-Border Interbank Payment Systems.
“We use our local currency. Of course, we’re not talking about de-dollarization because there’s a long way to go. But at least we try – Malaysia with Indonesia, Malaysia with Thailand, and together with China, trying to use our own local currency, even beginning with 10 or 20%,” Anwar said. “It makes a difference because we cannot continue complaining but not executing our own plan among in our countries and our friendly neighbors.”
Points of caution
But there are questions about BRICS, ranging from the challenge of maintaining neutrality in it to balancing participation with the task of strengthening ASEAN.
“BRICS is indeed in the vortex of the geopolitical rivalry. BRICS now has been politicized by China and Russia as a vehicle to go against the west, where Indonesia would gain the most by staying non-aligned politically,” said Lina Alexandra, head of the international relations department at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta.
“Therefore, a rushed decision to join the institution, without clear (rationale), has put Indonesia right at the vortex,” she explained. One of Prabowo’s first decisions as president in October 2024 was to push for BRICS membership, which his predecessor Joko Widodo had been more cautious about.
Then there is the hostility from Trump, who in July threatened 10% more tariffs on those who back the “Anti-American politics of BRICS”. But Southeast Asians are moving on from unpredictable US policies, looking out for points of engagement beyond – not against – the west or looking for loyalty to any power.
“With Trump moving headlong into isolationism, unilateralism and trading based on ‘revenge’, and with Europe kowtowing to the US more than ever, most countries in the global South feel they have to at least establish good relations with the BRICS, if not more solid ties,’ Bello said. More than US hostility, he added, “what’s keeping countries from stampeding to the BRICS” is caution that its institutions like the New Development Bank and the Contingency Reserve Arrangement “are still too underdeveloped to accommodate the huge demand for resources from the Global South.”
Bello sees other challenges. First, developing countries expect BRICS’ decision-making processes to be “more participatory and democratic” than Western-led multilateral agencies. “So one big question is: Are the key actors in BRICS going to be open to sharing decision-making power over their resources?” he asked. Second, he continued: “The leading forces in the BRICS are a mix of authoritarian and formally democratic states; is it not realistic to expect that they will bring their regime preferences and styles of governance to a multilateral setting?”
As for ASEAN, it needs to “carefully balance” its members’ engagement with BRICS, Lin stresses. “The challenge is to extract value from initiatives like BRICS without diluting its own institutional coherence or relevance,” she explained. “If managed well, this multi-alignment strategy can amplify ASEAN’s global agency. If not, it may expose internal divisions and blunt its collective voice.”
BRICS “provides an important multilateral corrective” in a US-dominated world “now transitioning away from both unipolarity and multilateralism,” Sarang Shidore of the US-based Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft wrote. “Such a corrective will inevitably come with its own flaws and blind spots. But a stable transition requires it.”
BRICS’ arc spans more than trade and economics. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s description of BRICS as “a manifestation of the Bandung non-aligned movement” in July was a nod to Asia and its non-aligned roots.
He was referring to the 1955 Asia-Africa Conference, or the Bandung Conference, that marks its 70th year in 2025. Indonesia hosted that landmark meeting of solidarity among developing countries at a time of decolonization and nation-building. India and China were leaders in that alliance too.
"The Bandung Conference refuted the division of the world into zones of influence and advanced the fight for a multipolar international order. BRICS is an heir of the Non-Aligned Movement," Lula said at the 2025 BRICS Summit in Brazil. Today, "we are witnessing an unprecedented collapse of multilateralism," he said, adding that "our autonomy is once again in check."
Fears of a nuclear war are back and countries invest more in weapons than in development assistance, he said, describing the world today. While the UN played a major role in the decolonization of developing countries, its Security Council has become paralyzed in its attempts to address today's conflicts, Lula said.
"If international governance does not reflect the 21st century’s new multipolar reality, it is up to the BRICS to contribute to bringing it up to date," he explained, saying its "representativeness and diversity make it a powerful platform".
New friends
In BRICS, Indonesia and BRICS partner countries may to get to know better Africa and Latin America – regions that they know less than China and India, which ASEAN has strategic partnerships and free trade accords with.
While Southeast Asian countries’ links with BRICS are individual initiatives, Anwar has gotten Lula to commit to coming to Malaysia when it hosts this year’s second ASEAN leaders’ summit in October. Lula is also visiting Indonesia on the same trip.
“BRICS’ success should not be measured by how much they can ‘replace’ western systems, but by its ability to deliver practical, issue-based cooperation for emerging economies,” Lin pointed out.
These are early days in developing Southeast Asian countries’ entry into the BRICS club of the Global South. But their comfort level with it confirms that a multipolar – some say post-US – world is already a reality.
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Johanna Son, who has covered Southeast Asia for over three decades, is the editor and founder of the Reporting ASEAN series, whose newsletter is here.
Disclaimer: This published work was prepared with the support of the Heinrich Böll Stiftung. The views and analysis contained in the work are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the foundation. The author is responsible for any liability claims against copyright breaches of graphics, photograph, images, audio, and text used.
