Modi and Xi’s Meeting Caps a Detente

Modi and Xi’s Meeting Caps a Detente – Foreign Policy

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South Asia Brief:

Modi and Xi’s Meeting Caps a Detente

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South Asia Brief

News and analysis from India and its neighboring countries in South Asia, a region home to one-fourth of the world’s population. Delivered Wednesday.

Modi and Xi’s Meeting Caps a Detente

Despite the thaw, India-China rivalry remains inevitable.

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*Michael Kugelman*

By **Michael Kugelman**, the writer of *Foreign Policy*’s weekly South Asia Brief and a senior fellow for South Asia at the Atlantic Council.

!Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi shake hands.

*Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi shake hands.*

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi shake hands before the start of the BRICS summit in New Delhi on Sept. 12. Alexander Kazakov/Pool/AFP via Getty Images

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September 16, 2026, 8:21 PM

Welcome to*Foreign Policy*’s South Asia Brief.

The highlights this week: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping meet on the **sidelines of the BRICS summit**, Bangladesh faces the **world’s worst measles outbreak** as the death toll passes 1,000, and thousands of people remain missing after **Nepal’s deadly floods**.

Welcome to*Foreign Policy*’s South Asia Brief.

The highlights this week: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping meet on the **sidelines of the BRICS summit**, Bangladesh faces the **world’s worst measles outbreak** as the death toll passes 1,000, and thousands of people remain missing after **Nepal’s deadly floods**.

Sign up to receive South Asia Brief in your inbox every Wednesday.

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Modi, Xi Meet on BRICS Sideline

Over the weekend, Chinese President Xi Jinping traveled to India for the first time in seven years. Xi was in New Delhi for 24 hours to attend this year’s BRICS leaders’ summit, where he held a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. An Indian Foreign Ministry statement said the two leaders pledged to strengthen commercial and cultural cooperation.

A more striking readout came from Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who said that the bilateral meeting covered long-term, strategic issues and that Modi and Xi reached “the most important consensus” to be partners, not rivals. Beijing hopes the meeting will advance bilateral ties “without stagnation or backsliding,” Wang added.

These are positive words for a relationship between major competitors—and one that was plunged into deep crisis after a deadly 2020 border clash in the Ladakh region. But an India-China rapprochement has been playing out for nearly two years. Xi’s visit marked the culmination, not the commencement, of India-China detente.

Still, the extent of the thaw shouldn’t be overstated. Historically, India-China ties have had their moments, with ample heady talk and good optics. Invariably, fresh tensions have spoiled them; the two are destined to remain rivals by history, geography, and geopolitics.

In October 2024, the post-Ladakh tensions began to ease with the inking of a new border agreement. India and China subsequently made pledges to resume direct air flights and bolster commercial cooperation. In March 2025, Modi said on a podcast that cooperation with China was “essential” for global stability.

Contrary to some commentary, the detente began before U.S. President Donald Trump was elected to a second term and wasn’t sparked by his policies. But Trump’s tariffs, which have hit both India and China hard, and concerns about access to U.S. markets gave both sides a strong incentive to accelerate their rapprochement and especially to deepen trade ties.

However, the reality is that continued India-China rivalry is all but inevitable. Both countries are both proud civilizational states and dispute claims to around 15,000 square miles of territory—equal to the size of Greece—along their shared border. They disagree on many other major issues, from Taiwan and Tibet to surveillance.

Perhaps most significantly, China is a close ally of India’s bitter rival Pakistan. Last year, the Pakistani military used Chinese weaponry in air combat operations against India for the first time.

Such challenges may seem surmountable, given what the India-China relationship has going for it. This includes their rock-solid trade partnership, shared interests, and considerable cooperation in global forums (including BRICS, but also the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.)

Not surprisingly, India-China ties have often enjoyed periods of warmth—but ultimately a trigger, often a border provocation, has shattered that calm.

In 2017, a few years after Xi and Modi were photographed smiling on a swing together, a 73-day military standoff on the Doklam Plateau plunged relations into crisis. The Ladakh clash came just months after another Modi-Xi summit in India. Though border tensions have subsided, territorial disputes still fester and occasionally flare.

To be sure, there are plenty of reasons for New Delhi and Beijing to bury the hatchet. They want to ease tensions along their fraught border, create space for deeper commercial cooperation, hedge against Trump’s unpredictability, and remove a diplomatic