Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the SCO Summit has been described as substantive but measured, with both sides signalling cautious progress while keeping the border issue at the core of their engagement.
Jonathan Cheng, China Bureau Chief at The Wall Street Journal, said Xi is using the current global uncertainty to reposition China. “Donald Trump’s return to office has upended a lot of assumptions about the way the world works. Xi Jinping does see an opportunity here,” he noted, adding that Beijing is projecting itself as a central power for neighbours like India and Russia to cluster around.
Former Ambassador to China Ashok Kantha underlined that the Modi–Xi dialogue continues the process initiated in Kazan last year. “What we’re looking at is a calibrated improvement of relations between India and China. It remains a cautious expansion of relations—step-by-step improvement—rather than any kind of reset in ties,” he said.
Kantha also clarified that India’s approach to China is independent of pressure from the United States, calling speculation about a shift due to US tariffs “misplaced.”
For now, the India-China relationship appears set on a cautious path—maintaining stability at the border while testing limited openings in economic and diplomatic engagement.
Below is the excerpt from the discussion.
Q: This meeting took place under the leadership of Xi Jinping and China at a time when the world has been hit by US tariffs and there is doubt about the US position in the global economic order as well. What was Xi Jinping’s message to SCO partners at this point?
Cheng: I think the message is pretty clear. This is a time of turmoil in the global environment. Of course, Donald Trump’s return to office has upended a lot of assumptions about the way the world works and about foreign relations, and Xi Jinping does see an opportunity here. Certainly, we’ve just heard you talk a little bit about the tariffs that the US has imposed on India, and I think that came as a big shock. I don’t know that this trip was planned after those tariffs. I think it must have come before, but nonetheless, you do see this reshaping of the global jigsaw puzzle here a little bit. And I think Xi Jinping has the wind at his back right now. I think the economy in China is not as strong as it could be, but it’s strong enough. On AI, military, and other cutting-edge technologies, China is showing how central it is to the global economy, with semiconductors and everything else. And I think it’s a good time to signal to neighbours like India, like Russia, that there is another power that they can cluster around. I think that’s the message that is implicit there. Of course, Xi Jinping will not come out and say this explicitly, but you can see it in the imagery, the body language, and the words that he uses as well.
Q: Ambassador Kantha, clearly Xi Jinping is trying to send out the message that China is ready to fill the void being left by the United States. How do you see the meeting between Prime Minister Modi and President Xi that took place? It was almost a one-hour-long meeting. There was a discussion on the boundary dispute. There was a demand that there should be predictability and transparency in economic ties as well. But the question a lot of investors would be asking is: will this meeting lead to a closer alignment, a more long-term alignment, or will there be a cautious approach from both sides?
Kantha: Well, this meeting was a substantive engagement between Prime Minister Modi and President Xi. Essentially, it has taken forward the process that commenced when the Prime Minister met with President Xi in Kazan, Russia, in October last year. What we’re looking at is a calibrated improvement of relations between India and China. We are trying to frame this relationship more in a bilateral context, though turbulence in the geopolitical environment does impact the relationship. The Prime Minister was very clear that we are not looking at India-China relations through the prism of relations with a third country. I think that’s the message he was conveying—that speculation that India is moving towards China because it’s under pressure from the United States is misplaced. He wanted to allay such perceptions.
Now, in terms of progress, yes, one can see greater momentum in economic contacts between India and China, apart from people-to-people engagement. But I think the Indian side has made it very clear that there are issues that need to be addressed, including those relating to the border. The Prime Minister reiterated that for the normal development of relations, you need peace and tranquillity to be maintained in border areas. The border issue is back at the center stage of the relationship, and there are a whole lot of other concerns which need to be addressed. So, I would say it remains a cautious expansion of relations—step-by-step improvement—rather than any kind of reset in ties between India and China at this stage.
Q: Ambassador Sibal, if I can come to you: when it came to the boundary question, the Prime Minister underlined the importance of peace and tranquillity on the border for continued development of bilateral relations. The two leaders noted with satisfaction the successful disengagement last year and the maintenance of peace and tranquillity along the border area since then. They recognised the important decisions taken by the two special representatives earlier this month and agreed to work further towards those efforts. Now Ambassador Sibal, does the boundary dispute still take center stage for India? Because this statement seems to indicate that whatever has been achieved via disengagement, we’re happy with that. But what about status quo ante? That was the demand of India ever since the Galwan clashes took place—that we revert to the positions that existed before April 2020.
Sibal: I think that position remains, but there was no sense in putting this position straightforwardly in the exchanges that they had. This has already been conveyed at various levels in the past, and I’m sure it was conveyed to Wang Yi. They know what India’s position is. The point the Prime Minister was trying to make is that we’ve had this disengagement, and currently the situation is peaceful, but there has been no de-escalation, and of course no question of any redeployment. On the contrary, China is building this railway now from Xinjiang to Tibet, which will give them greater possibilities of moving troops and material to the Tibet region to maintain pressure on India.
I’ve always asked myself why China wants to militarise Tibet so much. There is no military threat from India. Our position is essentially defensive. But leave that aside. If you look at the joint statements that have been issued during high-level visits between China and India, they’re always forward-looking. On the border issue, there is always an agreement to maintain peace and tranquillity. In fact, in the 2005 and 2006 visits of the Chinese Prime Minister and the Chinese President, it was agreed that the two sides would begin the process of clarifying the Line of Actual Control, which was agreed to in the 1993 and 1996 agreements. But it didn’t move forward.
As regards to this formulation—that the border issue should be resolved on the basis of political and strategic perspectives—this was the reason why the Special Representative mechanism was set up: not to go into long-winded discussions on legalities and history, but to look at the political and strategic aspects and then take a decision. Now we’ve come back to the same formulation after, I don’t know, 24 meetings of the special representatives that didn’t produce any result. Whether they’ll produce any result now remains to be seen. Especially as China is very rigid on territorial issues, and the gap between India and China—economic, military, and otherwise—has increased. It’s not clear why China would make any major concessions to India on the border.
From our point of view, if we can maintain peace and tranquillity on the border, then we can slowly open up other aspects of our ties in a limited way, so as to keep the relationship stable and also persuade China—and this has always been our case, though without results—that we must reduce the trade deficit between the two countries. We’ve always said it is unsustainable, but the deficit keeps expanding. Now, whether as a result of these soft noises that are being made, and the fact that Trump is throwing his weight around—he’s also targeted China, though with confused messages—China may be willing to look for alternative markets because its market access to the United States has been affected. The export-import between the two countries has gone down pretty drastically this year. Whether that will bring them to a more balanced trade with India by opening up their market remains to be seen. In the past, they haven’t done that. It remains to be seen now. I would remain sceptical.
Watch the accompanying video for the entire discussion.