libs will say this and then turn around and say "BRICS is just an arm of China, it's dominated by them economically"

(not that that point is entirely false, BRICS is indeed economically dominated by China and I wonder if there would be half as much interest for countries to join if China wasn't in it, but India is a pretty big counterweight to China's power in BRICS in practice)

Sure, there's no power imbalance between the global hegemonic ruler and its "allies". The fact that on paper they each get a vote means its perfectly equal