Photo by Nick J.B. Moore/ For China Daily

Peter Frankopan, director of the Oxford Center for Byzantine Research, said the BRICS Summit had demonstrated that the organization now had new life.

"BRICS is not a busted flush. If things go right for these nations with having something like 40 percent of the world's population, they have a chance of shaping the modern world," he said.

Frankopan, who wrote the international bestselling The Silk Roads: A New History of the World, also believes that President Xi was demonstrating, through his chairmanship of BRICS, the importance of engaging with other countries.

"It is a very consistent message, which he also has demonstrated with the Belt and Road Initiative, to want to achieve greater cooperation, more trade, stability, greater prosperity and win-win outcomes. It is actually what he should be saying."

The historian believes that BRICS is just one important vehicle through which China is now forging partnerships with other nations.

"From China's point of view it may as well play different hands of blackjack at different tables whether this be BRICS, Belt and Road or British and US investment. China has got a lot of reserves, big muscles and is able to do things," he says.

Frankopan says this is in marked contrast to the message of protectionism being delivered by Donald Trump's White House.

"You can become isolationist if you close all the windows and all the doors. China is, however, talking big in every way and you can see this with the massive economic change in the country," he says.