Chinese President Xi Jinping’s warm welcome to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Tianjin on Sept. 1 produced striking visuals of rapprochement but yielded little progress on the core disputes that keep New Delhi and Beijing at odds.
The meeting came after a partial military disengagement along the Line of Actual Control following deadly clashes in the Galwan Valley in 2020, yet China has not accepted India’s demand for full de-escalation and withdrawal of forces to rear bases. Talks in the run-up to Tianjin produced a new working group and an “early harvest” package aimed at stabilizing the frontier, but negotiators remain divided over whether to segment the dispute or settle all sectors simultaneously.
Diplomacy at Tianjin included visual signals beyond the bilateral China-India meeting. Russian President Vladimir Putin was pictured giving Modi a ride in his presidential limousine to a bilateral session, and the three leaders staged an orchestrated “pull aside” that evoked an effort to revive a Russia-India-China trilateral forum. Moscow sought to resurrect a format that once helped incubate BRICS and the SCO, but the encounter produced more spectacle than concrete commitments, officials and analysts said.
The summit built on a slow thaw that began after the 2020 clashes. In October 2024, Modi and Xi met on the margins of an SCO gathering in Kazan, and both capitals agreed to limited measures such as the resumption of certain flights, reopening of travel for religious pilgrimage to Kailash Mansarovar, and reinstatement of senior-level exchanges. Tianjin extended those limited openings, but substantive resolution of the border standoff remains elusive.
At the core of the bilateral impasse is a widening power asymmetry and competing visions for Asia. Beijing has pressed for deference from regional states as it expands economic and military influence. New Delhi rejects a hierarchy in which China asserts privileged status, insisting that a multipolar world requires a multipolar Asia. Xi emphasized economic partnership as the bedrock of India-China ties at Tianjin, while Modi refrained from endorsing Xi’s declaration that India and China should jointly lead the Global South or from echoing references to Panchsheel, the 1954 principles of peaceful coexistence the two countries once touted.
The dispute is constrained further by China’s close strategic partnership with Pakistan. China’s long-standing military and economic support for Islamabad has been a consistent source of Indian concern, and the summer’s brief India-Pakistan war following the massacre of 26 Indian tourists in Kashmir underscored those fears. Time reported that Pakistani forces used Chinese weaponry and that Beijing provided targeting and surveillance assistance and participated in electronic warfare during operations against Indian aircraft and missiles; Indian officials have warned that a two-front conflict involving China and Pakistan is an increasingly realistic scenario.
Those security fears shape New Delhi’s foreign policy calculations. A shared aim of preventing Chinese regional hegemony has driven a closer alignment between India and the United States, which New Delhi views as a counterweight to Beijing’s expanding influence. Over the past two decades, bipartisan support for deeper U.S.-India ties helped produce instruments such as an invigorated Quadrilateral Security Dialogue with Australia and Japan, the AUKUS security pact among Australia, the U.K. and the U.S., and stronger trilateral cooperation with South Korea and Japan. Washington’s Indo-Pacific strategy is widely seen in New Delhi as reinforcing India’s capacity to resist pressure from Beijing.
But that alignment faces uncertainty amid shifts in U.S. policy under President Donald Trump’s second term. Indian observers point to Washington’s tariff actions against New Delhi and disparaging comments from senior U.S. officials, including President Trump, his Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and trade adviser Peter Navarro, as sources of strain. China responded quickly to perceived American pressure by extending diplomatic support to India, seeking to capitalize on frictions between New Delhi and Washington. At the same time, some signals from Washington—reports that Trump may skip a forthcoming Quad summit in India, questions about U.S. commitment to AUKUS, and public comments that analysts say appear to deprioritize the defense of Taiwan—have generated anxiety in New Delhi and among other American allies in the region.
Those developments create a complex environment for India’s strategic choices. New Delhi has publicly underscored the need to manage an adversarial relationship with China while preserving avenues of economic cooperation where possible. Chinese leaders have argued that the border issue should not define bilateral ties; India maintains that border resolution is indispensable to any durable normalization.
Modi’s cautious responses in Tianjin—accepting some Chinese overtures while refraining from endorsing grander narratives of Sino-Indian partnership—reflect that balancing act. Analysts noted that while the summit showcased China’s convening power and Beijing’s efforts to present itself as a leader of the Global South, the gestures did not bridge the fundamental trust deficit.
Moscow’s role at Tianjin highlighted further realignments. India’s historical relationship with Russia has diminished in scale and strategic weight even as Russia has deepened its own alignment with China under a declared “no limits partnership.” Putin’s efforts to revive trilateral coordination among Moscow, New Delhi and Beijing met only with choreographed optics rather than a substantive institutional rebirth.
For now, the immediate product of Tianjin is limited: incremental confidence-building measures, a new working group to address border tranquility, and a reinforcement of diplomatic channels. The deeper fissures—competing strategic visions, unresolved territorial claims, asymmetric military capabilities, and China’s ties with Pakistan—remain intact. With uncertainty in U.S. policy and the persistence of regional rivalries, New Delhi and Beijing are likely to continue a cautious engagement characterized by calibrated cooperation in some areas and uncompromising competition in others.
Diplomacy at Tianjin underscored that appearances of cordiality can coexist with entrenched rivalry. The summit’s visuals signaled a mutual interest in managing tensions, but the substantive steps required to settle the long-running border dispute and to build strategic trust were not taken. Absent clear, verifiable commitments on force reductions and mutual de-escalation, the India-China relationship is likely to remain defined by episodic diplomacy juxtaposed with deep strategic distrust.