Milan (AsiaNews) – As Xi Jinping’s overseas travel becomes less frequent, each trip is interpreted as a gauge of the importance Beijing attaches to the country he visits.
This analytical framework applies to his expected presence at the BRICS summit in New Delhi on 12 and 13 September, a visit officially confirmed today by China’s foreign ministry.
This marks the Chinese leaders’ first visit to India in seven years; back in 2019 he attended an informal summit in Mamallapuram with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
According to the South China Morning Post, Xi will be accompanied by a delegation of approximately 400 people with Beijing letting it be known that it places great relevance on cooperation among major emerging economies.
He skipped last year’s BRICS summit in Brazil, sending Premier Li Qiang in his place, and did not attend the 2023 G20 summit in New Delhi. For many observers, both no-shows were linked to ongoing tensions along the Himalayan border.
Thus, Xi’s trip to the Indian capital follows a cautious rapprochement built up over nearly two years.
The thaw began with the agreement on patrolling disputed sectors of Ladakh, announced in October 2024, and the meeting between Xi and Modi in Kazan (Russia), their first since the 2020 clash in the Galwan Valley, which had left at least 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers dead.
Exchanges of visits between ministers and advisors have followed.
Then, after seven years, Modi returned to China, in Tianjin, for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit, a regional security group in which China and Russia play a dominant role.
On that occasion, Xi and Modi asserted that they viewed themselves as “partners, not rivals”, and the Indian leader personally invited Xi to the New Delhi summit.
Meanwhile, Hindu pilgrimages to Mount Kailash in Tibet have resumed (tragically marred by the disaster of 26 August), while two Himalayan trade crossings, closed in 2020, reopened this summer.
The final piece of this opening-up process fell into place just a few days ago in Beijing. In late August, Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi concluded the 25th round of border negotiations with an eight-point consensus.
This agreement established expert groups on border demarcation and scheduled the next round of talks in India for 2027.
For China, this process is described as the “elephant and the dragon dancing together”, a metaphor that has never appealed to New Delhi, where official statements tend to be far briefer than their Chinese counterparts.
The Trump factor accelerated the thaw
This sequence of events was influenced by the 50 per cent tariffs Donald Trump imposed on Indian exports in August 2025, partly as a penalty for purchasing Russian oil, a measure that hit a country accustomed to positioning itself as the United States' privileged partner in Asia.
Coincidentally, the US president hosted the Pakistani army chief at the White House and claimed to be mediating the conflict between New Delhi and Islamabad, something the Indian government denied, while Modi declared his readiness to pay the price of the tariffs rather than sacrifice the interests of Indian farmers.
As noted, the rapprochement with Beijing had actually begun in the autumn of 2024, prior to the imposition of US tariffs, which accelerated the process leading up to the sight of Xi, Modi, and Vladimir Putin walking side-by-side in Tianjin, an image that became the most striking symbol of this new phase.
The landscape of trade relations between India and the United States has also shifted since February, after the US Supreme Court stripped many tariffs of their legal basis followed by Trump’s announcement of a new, across-the-board 15 per cent tariff on imports from all countries.
Consequently, New Delhi has resumed negotiations with Washington while simultaneously strengthening ties with Tokyo. Thus, the rapprochement with China does not imply a move away from India's other key Asian partners.
At the same time, the diplomatic thaw has not eliminated tensions on the ground. Patrols along the Himalayan border have resumed at only two points, and approximately 50,000 troops remain deployed on each side, while the race by both countries to build military infrastructure continues.
Tensions also persist regarding territorial claims and political gestures.
On the eve of the summit, the China Daily, the Communist Party’s English-language newspaper, accused Modi of hostility toward China after New Delhi assigned official Indian names to locations in Arunachal Pradesh, the Himalayan state that Beijing claims as its own territory.
Rapprochement and its limits
India’s annual trade deficit with China remains close to US$ 100 billion, with about two thirds of the active ingredients used by India’s pharmaceutical industry coming from Chinese factories, as do 95 per cent of the components for iPhones assembled in the country.
In 2025, Beijing restricted exports of rare earths and fertilisers to India, highlighting India's heavy reliance on Chinese supplies.
The restrictions were lifted only during Wang Yi's visit to New Delhi. In March, India eased the curbs on Chinese investment introduced in 2020, allowing stakes of up to 10 per cent without government approval.
However, business visas remain severely restricted. According to the Chinese ambassador to India, most of the approximately 50 bilateral dialogue mechanisms have yet to be activated.
Competition between the two giants extends beyond their shared border.
Beijing has gained ground in countries New Delhi considers part of its sphere of influence, as evidenced by the decision of Bangladesh’s new head of government, Muhammad Yunus, to make China the destination for his first state visit, and the agreement signed last year between Sinopec and the Sri Lankan government for a US$ 3.7-billion refinery near the port of Hambantota.
Given this context, expectations for the outcome of a bilateral meeting between Xi and Modi on the sidelines of the summit are very low.
Sources close to the negotiations point to limited progress on trade and investment, with no major deal regarding the border, and note that the leaders' two most recent meetings did not even yield a joint statement.
The agenda of the upcoming visit is expected to include easing of visa rules and connectivity between the two countries, with New Delhi inclined toward gradual, reciprocal concessions.
Antara Ghosal Singh, a researcher at the Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation, told the South China Morning Post that for India, a successful meeting must ensure a stable border and more secure supply chains, while providing greater negotiating leverage with the United States.
For China, high-level contact with India serves to undermine US containment policies.
The summit will also serve as a test for BRICS. China alone accounts for roughly two thirds of the combined GDP of the bloc, which has already shown signs of strain under India’s presidency, such as the clash between Iranian and UAE delegations during the meeting of national security advisors in June.
The summit’s outcome will primarily reveal the extent to which China and India are truly willing to turn the diplomatic thaw of the past two years into a lasting improvement in relations.
Writing in the Asia Times, Sana Hashmi, a researcher at the Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation, describes the current phase as one of fragile stabilisation, accompanied by strategic competition spanning from the Himalayan border to the Indian Ocean.
Chinese rhetoric about the “elephant and the dragon dancing together” must contend with the approximately 50,000 troops each side has deployed along the Himalayas.
A handshake between Xi and Modi in Delhi would mark another step forward, but the future of Sino-Indian relations will depend above all on developments along the border.
RED LANTERNS IS THE ASIANEWS NEWSLETTER DEDICATED TO CHINA. WOULD YOU LIKE TO RECEIVE IT EVERY THURSDAY? TO SUBSCRIBE, CLICK HERE.
