What the recent trajectory of India-China ties means for the summit

Why in the News

The Chinese President arrives in India for the BRICS leaders’ summit, his third visit since assuming the presidency and the first after a gap of seven years. The summit is the stated reason for the trip, and its bilateral weight comes from what the visit interrupts, the border standoff that began in eastern Ladakh in 2020 and marked the low point of the relationship, now in its seventh year. Years of diplomatic and military-level talks produced a disengagement of troops in 2024, and a sequence of normalisation steps has followed, from direct flights to eased visas. The structural disputes behind the standoff are untouched by those steps, and the trade deficit and market access questions sit exactly where they did. That fault line, alongside a turbulent global environment, will shape what the summit can agree.

What is the record of India-China border standoffs?

1. The two early conflicts: The 1962 war was followed by border clashes in Sikkim in 1967.
2. The Ladakh standoffs of the last decade: Major standoffs occurred at Depsang in Ladakh in 2013 and at Chumar in Ladakh in 2014.
3. Doklam: A standoff at Doklam followed in 2017, in a sector away from Ladakh.
4. Eastern Ladakh since 2020: The standoff that began in eastern Ladakh in 2020 is still ongoing, with about 50,000 Indian troops deployed along the Line of Actual Control, meaning the undelineated line separating the two sides’ positions.
5. The casualties of June 2020: The clashes of June 2020 killed 20 Indian defence personnel, including an officer of Colonel rank, and at least four Chinese defence personnel.

What has changed since the 2024 disengagement?

1. The talks produced a withdrawal: Years of diplomatic and military-level talks led to a disengagement of troops in 2024, and incremental steps have since been taken to stabilise the relationship.
2. Connectivity restored: Direct flights between the two countries resumed and visa restrictions were eased.
3. Pilgrimage resumed: The Kailash Mansarovar Yatra was restarted.
4. Investment rules relaxed: Restrictions on Chinese investments in India were relaxed.
5. The visit itself is the signal: Travel to India after a seven year gap is read as a positive signal, and only to a degree.

What has not changed?

1. The trade imbalance: A massive trade deficit remains the defining feature of the economic relationship.
2. Market access runs one way: The lack of market access for Indian businesses in China is frequently flagged as an issue.
3. Enforcement action continues: India is acting against Chinese firms for tax evasion.
4. Trust is the deeper casualty: Strategic and political trust has been diminished by a border standoff now in its seventh year.
5. The Pakistan factor deepened it: Collusion between China and Pakistan during Operation Sindoor further worsened the crisis of trust and credibility.

How far have the founding economies diverged since BRIC was named?

1. The origin of the label: Goldman Sachs analysts described India, China, Brazil and Russia as the world’s emerging economies in 2001, and BRIC was born as a grouping in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.
2. China: It has become the second-largest economy in the world after the United States.
3. India: It has grown at a modest rate and been outpaced by Beijing.
4. Russia and Brazil: Russia has faced challenges from wars of its own making, and Brazil has floundered amid frequent regime changes and scandals.
5. South Africa: A later entrant to the grouping, it has not lived up to expectations.
6. The 2009 turning point: The first BRICS leaders’ summit was held in the shadow of the global financial crisis, and China emerged from that crisis stronger than many Western nations.

How does China’s assertiveness show up beyond the border?

1. Military growth follows economic growth: China has grown militarily, with big-power ambitions to dethrone the United States.
2. Where the posture is visible: Its increasingly aggressive and assertive stance shows in its neighbourhood, in its actions in the South China Sea, in the Indo-Pacific, and on the borders it shares with India.
3. India absorbs a disproportionate share: India has faced the brunt of border standoffs frequently, and the belligerence of the Chinese state under the current President has been greater than at any time in the recent past.

Is BRICS an anti-West grouping or a non-Western one?

1. The two framings are not the same: China and Russia have attempted to frame BRICS as an “anti-West” grouping, and India sees it as a “non-Western” grouping.
2. India’s position rules out the first: India has built robust ties with the United States over the last 25 years and is courting Europe, Australia, Canada and other Western nations, so it is decidedly not anti-West.
3. The dependence is stated plainly: India needs the West for access to capital and technology, and as a destination for its people, more than China or Russia do.
4. Beijing’s self-placement within the bloc: China has viewed itself as the “first among equals” in the grouping, and long supported enlarging it beyond the original five, which produced the 2023 expansion to the present strength of 11 members.
5. Western action against members complicates the divide: US tariffs on Brazil and political disagreements with South Africa cut across the distinction the members are arguing over.

What does the convergence against US tariffs actually buy?

1. The shared exposure: The US President’s arbitrary tariff moves have cornered countries around the world, including China and India, and the two now find themselves on the same side in attempting to counter the effects.
2. China’s own position has weakened: After years of high economic growth, China has revised its expectations for the near future.
3. India’s use of the summit: India is hosting the summit partly to signal to the United States that it has other partners in fields ranging from technology to fuel security.
4. What those partners supply: The United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia have been investing in the Indian economy, Russia has stepped in as an energy supplier amid the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and Brazil is ready to partner on critical minerals.

How has the West Asia war split the grouping?

1. The sovereignty question it raises: The US war on Iran has raised questions about powerful nations violating the territorial integrity and sovereignty of others, and both China and Russia are guilty of the same in their own neighbourhoods.
2. The economic cost is common: Energy prices and inflation have risen, and BRICS countries, as part of the Global South, are bearing the brunt.
3. Members sit on opposite sides of the same war: Iran is attacking US military bases in West Asia, and the United Arab Emirates hosts several US military bases and personnel.
4. Why this needs China: Moving those two members towards cooperation and presenting a more unified flank requires Chinese weight alongside India’s hosting role.
5. The scale of attendance raises the stakes: Leaders of over 30 countries and groupings are attending, so a failure to reconcile positions is visible well beyond the membership.

Challenges to stabilising India-China ties

1. The trade deficit is structural, not tariff driven: India’s imports are concentrated in the intermediate and capital goods its own manufacturing runs on, so restricting imports raises domestic costs rather than closing the gap. Eg. Active pharmaceutical ingredients, the chemical inputs a finished medicine is made from, are sourced largely from China even as India exports the finished formulations.
   The Fix: Tie the production incentive schemes for bulk drugs and electronic components to measured reductions in import dependence, with the baseline published.
2. Disengagement is not de-escalation: Withdrawal from friction points leaves the roads, airfields and habitat built up behind the line in place, so force can return faster than it left. Eg. Both sides have retained the forward infrastructure constructed after 2020.
   The Fix: Negotiate a verifiable de-induction of forces and a written restoration of patrolling norms, rather than treating troop separation as settlement.
3. There is no agreed line to defend: The Line of Actual Control is not delineated on a map both sides accept, so the same patrol is routine to one side and an incursion to the other. Eg. Each side maintains its own claim line across the Depsang plains.
   The Fix: Task the Special Representatives mechanism with a sector-by-sector exchange of maps, beginning with the sectors where no standoff has occurred.
4. A third country sets the floor under India’s threat assessment: The military supply and intelligence relationship between China and Pakistan means a bilateral understanding does not reduce the threat India plans against. Eg. Chinese-origin platforms form the bulk of Pakistan’s recent fighter and naval inductions.
   The Fix: Keep the normalisation track and the security track formally separate and say so publicly, so trade and travel measures are not treated as concessions on security.
5. Economic opening is being restored without reciprocity: Relaxing investment rules restores Chinese capital’s access to India without restoring Indian firms’ access to the Chinese market. Eg. Press Note 3 of 2020 required government approval for investment from countries sharing a land border with India, and its relaxation is not matched by a Chinese commitment.
   The Fix: Make each relaxation sector specific and conditional on a named market access commitment of comparable value.

Conclusion

The visit restores high level contact without touching what caused its absence. India and China now share an exposure to US trade measures, and shared exposure produces a common grievance more readily than a common position, since each retains the option of settling separately with Washington. The unresolved tension is that India needs Chinese weight to hold the grouping together on trade and energy, and needs the grouping not to be read as anti-Western, which is the framing Beijing prefers. What to watch is whether the summit declaration carries a joint position on unilateral trade measures, and whether the normalisation sequence extends from travel and pilgrimage to market access, which is the test of whether anything structural has moved.

Back2Basics: Operation Sindoor

1. What it was: Indian military strikes in May 2025 on terrorist infrastructure located in Pakistan and in Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir.
2. What prompted it: It followed the April 2025 attack on tourists at Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir.
3. How it ended: Several days of exchanges across the border were followed by an understanding between the two militaries to stop military action.
4. Why it appears in an India-China item: Chinese support to Pakistan during those exchanges is cited as having deepened India’s trust deficit with China, separately from the border dispute.

Matching Previous Year Question

“[2017, GS2, 10 marks] ‘China is using its economic relations and positive trade surplus as tools to develop potential military power status in Asia’, In the light of this statement, discuss its impact on India as her neighbor.”