The leaders of the Brics – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – held their seventh annual summit amid deep scepticism about their once-promising growth story. While Russia may have been the host of the show, the real engine behind the summit, and the changes taking place across the emerging world, is China.

Right now, the Brics face serious cyclical and structural challenges and India seems to be the only bright spot in the club. Russia, Brazil and South Africa are either in recession or dangerously close to it. China is struggling to maintain its growth momentum as it tries to rebalance its economy. All need to implement deep and difficult structural reforms if they want to increase their long term growth potential and live up to the Brics dream as it was envisioned in the early 2000s.

Yet, over the last 15 years, the Brics story has been little short of spectacular. In 2001, when the term was coined, their combined GDP was a quarter of that of the US. Now, it is almost on a par. What was little more than a loose concept has given rise to institutions such as the Brics Bank and the Contingent Reserve Agreement. Regular dialogue is taking place among the five countries above and beyond their regular summits.

But the Brics are not a club of equals and their balance of power has changed radically over time. China’s GDP is now almost 60 per cent larger than the other four countries combined. In 2001, it was 10 per cent smaller. More importantly, and in a stark departure from its usual restraint, China has decided to play a more assertive role in the pursuit of its global financial agenda. Indeed, 2015 is likely to go down in the financial history books as the year when China awoke.

This change of attitude is partly due to the frustration caused by a lack of progress in reforming the Bretton Woods institutions, and particularly by Washington’s continued inability to ratify reforms that were supposed to give additional IMF voting rights to emerging countries, most notably to China which currently has less voting rights than the Benelux countries.

Faced with such paralysis, at a time when development banks are more needed than ever to tackle the challenges of infrastructure and sustainable development finance, China has decided to organize things for itself and to promote a set of new financial institutions. Three have been formally established: the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which has been capitalized with $100bn dollars and is headquartered in Beijing; the New Development Bank (Brics Bank), based in Shanghai and with starting capital of $50bn; and an associated Contingent Reserve Arrangement of $100bn, which will receive up to $41bn from China.

In addition is a Silk Road fund with $40bn of capital put up exclusively by China. It will be used for equity investments in infrastructure projects on land and sea that, like the old Silk Road, will further connect China with Central Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe and beyond.

China, then, is spearheading the development of a group of institutions within the region and more broadly within emerging markets that will contribute to financing economic development and to sustaining financial and commercial dynamism. If they are successful, these institutions will increase the potential growth rate of the region, will consolidate China’s central role in it and will help the country find new engines of growth at a time when its traditional engines are sputtering.

To strengthen the entire architecture, Beijing is determined to give the renminbi a central role as a trade and investment currency. In the last five years, tremendous progress has been achieved on this front. From virtually zero, 25 per cent of China’s international trade and 30 per cent of its direct investment abroad are now denominated in renminbi. The renminbi has become one of the most widely used currencies, particularly in Asia. To facilitate its use and to ensure its liquidity, China has signed currency swap agreements with close to 30 countries and has set up RMB clearing centres on all continents. Finally, China has forcefully expressed its wish that its currency should be included in the SDR basket as part of the ongoing revision process to accelerate its rise as a reserve currency. The infrastructure underpinning the internationalization of the renminbi is rapidly taking shape across the world and will culminate with its wide acceptance as a reserve currency.

This being China, there is an element of pragmatism in the promotion of these institutions. China is seeding different entities and will likely provide the greatest support over time to the ones that, by its own criteria, are the most successful. For the time being, there is clearly a coincidence of interests among the Brics and Chinese dominance serves the other members well, as does the creation of an alternative system to Bretton Woods. The mobilisation of capital to spur their development and strengthen their resilience is very welcome at a time when liquidity is likely to become tighter and, in the case of Russia, sanctions are biting. Over the longer term, however, Chinese dominance over the Brics will likely create tensions as significant strategic differences between the members become more visible.

Yet the historical importance of these developments should not be missed. As China lays out a web of new trade and capital routes which connect Asia with the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, it positions itself at the centre of a new growth dynamic linking 85 per cent of the world’s population.