The News
China’s leader Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi held their first formal talks in five years Wednesday — a sign of thawing relations between the world’s two most populous countries.
The leaders met on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Russia. Xi called for stronger communication and cooperation, as well as to end the long-standing border conflicts between the two countries, China’s state broadcaster reported.
“It should be our priority to maintain peace and tranquility on the border. Mutual trust, mutual respect and mutual sensitivity should be the basis of our relationship,” Modi said, according to Indian media.
The meeting came just two days after Beijing and New Delhi reached a deal on patrolling their shared Himalayan border, which has been a source of tension between the two since several soldiers were killed in a clash four years ago.
SIGNALS
India and China could move closer together following border agreement
The border deal and today’s meeting could pave the way for future bilateral discussions; India has long insisted talks would be put on hold until the border situation was improved. The deal “sets the stage for repairing the ties between the two countries,” a retired Indian general told The New York Times, while a former Chinese military official said it would allow the countries to begin talks on other issues such as the economy. Even so, the relationship will likely continue to have its limits: “There will always be issues with us and a neighbor like China. It won’t be a free-flowing relationship,” India’s former foreign secretary told The Washington Post.
China and India praise ties with Russia
The Chinese and Indian leaders both hailed their countries’ deepening relationships with Russia during bilateral meetings with President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday. Xi said that even as the world is in “chaos,” the “deep friendship” between Beijing and Moscow will endure, while Modi said his latest trips to Russia show “our close and deepening” ties, Bloomberg reported. The Biden administration has sought to woo India away from Russia, but New Delhi has purchased ever more Russian oil, and Indian businesses have helped Russian oil companies bypass Western sanctions. Even so, India’s national security establishment has started to conclude that “beyond fuel and ammunition, India gets increasingly few rewards from its Russian partnership,” an expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations argued.
Even as BRICS grows, doubts persist about its influence
Even as BRICS has expanded its membership to include 45% of the world’s population, doubts remain as to the organization’s actual influence. The economist who coined the BRIC label in 2001 told Reuters that the summit is a “symbolic annual gathering where important emerging countries, particularly noisy ones like Russia, but also China, can basically get together and highlight how good it is to be part of something that doesn’t involve the U.S.” While BRICS seeks to portray itself as “an independent global actor,” it is ultimately just a group of “nation states seeking the best deal for themselves on a bilateral level,” one analyst wrote on X.