Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent visit to China, to attend the SCO leaders’ summit in Tianjin, was by any measure a milestone.
Modi’s first visit to China in seven years represented a long-awaited breakthrough in China-India relations and a snub to Washington, whose relations with Delhi have recently nosedived.
Significantly, the Indian leader traveled to China to attend a Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) leaders’ summit, at which he also met Russian President Vladimir Putin. In short, the visit was rich in geopolitical signaling and symbolism.
Beyond these, however, the visit has a deeper meaning, both for Indian foreign policy and China-India relations. First, the visit represented a “return to normal” in Indian foreign policy. In recent years, particularly after the 2020 border crisis with China, Indian foreign policy has increasingly leaned toward the US at the expense of its traditional strategic autonomy.
Hence, Modi’s visit to China for a SCO event represents a readjustment of Indian foreign policy from leaning toward Washington to a more balanced foreign policy. The readjustment, which started before the current crisis with Washington but has since been accelerated by it, will involve greater engagement with US rivals such as China and Russia and increased cooperation with BRICS and the SCO.
Importantly, the readjustment does not constitute a rejection of India’s partnership with the US—Delhi and Washington need each other too much for this—but it’s a clear and deliberate recalibration.
Second, the visit concluded the recent thaw in China-India relations and inaugurated a new period of active engagement. The difficult and slow thaw between China and India, which started in October 2024, has mostly managed to overcome the effects of the 2020 border crisis, stabilize the military situation on the border and restore a certain normalcy in relations. However, its goal was to defrost relations, not to develop them.
In comparison, the new era of engagement will seek to achieve progress in trade and investment and build a more stable and predictable bilateral relationship in an increasingly turbulent world.
On the global level, the least contentious part of their relationship, the two sides will focus more on promoting multipolarity. Even limited progress on territorial disputes is possible, including a potential agreement on the Sikkim section of the disputed border.
At the same time, more active Sino-Indian engagement will serve to strengthen China and India’s bargaining positions vis-à-vis Washington and enable them to shift attention away from each other to other foreign policy challenges such as Taiwan, Pakistan and the US. Of course, the competitive side of Sino-Indian relations and various contested issues impose limits on how far engagement can go.
Third, Modi’s visit to China, politically unfeasible until recently, signals that the border is no longer the central issue in relations. While de-escalation in border areas is still ongoing, the situation is now stable and has been mostly compartmentalized from the broader bilateral relationship.
This negotiation process was formalized with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s recent visit to Delhi, with the establishment of expert and military mechanisms to manage and resolve the border dispute.
Of course, the border has not lost its importance, sensitivity or role in China-India relations. The Modi-Xi meetings revealed lingering differences in its perceived place in bilateral relations. Nevertheless, it is no longer the critical issue between Beijing and New Delhi that it was after the 2020 fatal clashes.
Finally, Modi’s China visit signals a more activist Indian foreign policy, one less constrained by US considerations. Indeed, New Delhi needs a foreign policy reset to offset the destabilizing effects of President Donald Trump’s recent tariff and political onslaught on India and to diversify its options away from the US.
India’s activism will likely be combined with greater foreign policy flexibility to explore new areas of cooperation, build new institutional frameworks and reinvigorate old ones.
This policy will generate new opportunities for cooperation with China, greater momentum for the development of BRICS and a stronger push for free trade agreements (FTAs), such as the long-awaited India-EU FTA and a renegotiation of the India-ASEAN FTA. India might even reconsider joining the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), long seen as a de facto China-led free trade pact.
So, what does Modi’s China visit ultimately mean? Certainly, neither the wholesale transformation of China-India relations, nor the formation of an alignment between Beijing and Delhi against Washington.
Rather, it means the emergence of a new, more dynamic Indian foreign policy in which China will play a more important and positive role.
Ivan Lidarev is a visiting research fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore (ISAS-NUS, where he specializes in China-India relations and Indian foreign policy.