Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s China visit to attend the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation summit at Tianjin held no surprises. Everything about it, including the separate and different statements from India and China after Modi’s talks with Xi Jinping, was predictable. 

The visit was less about breakthroughs and more about signalling. With global geopolitics in flux, India’s positioning at Tianjin was watched closely – not just in Beijing, but also in Washington, Moscow and Tokyo. 

But here’s what the visit really left behind.

Photo-ops for Trump’s attention

The images of the Modi-Xi-sumit and of the “troika” – Modi, Xi and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin cracking a laugh and holding hands in Tianjin – were disseminated by Chinese media around the world faster than Modi could say Namaste Xi. China’s state media network made sure that the photos reached where Beijing intended: President Donald Trump, sitting in his newly gilded Oval Office, counting all his money. 

Modi’s presence at the SCO summit and the Modi-Xi meeting were long in the planning. Memories are short but the India-China thaw began last year as it became evident that Indian industry was stuck without Chinese investment and Chinese technology. In any case, Chinese exports to India were breaking records every passing year since 2020, notwithstanding the swell of nationalistic pride and the resolution to stop boycotting Chinese food (thus endangering the livelihoods of thousands of Indians) after 20 Indian soldiers were killed in clash with Chinese soldiers in Ladakh’s Galwan Valley. The Chinese too wanted to break the ice for their own reasons, chiefly a slowing Chinese economy.

The breakdown in relations with Trump over tariffs meant that Delhi could ride on the framing of Tianjin as a signal to the US that India had other options. Trump’s 50 percent tariff attack on India and the prevailing global uncertainty provided Delhi with political cover for making nice with China at a time that the opposition has been asking some hard questions on the fading of Modi’s famous “lal aankh” to Xi.

For his part, Modi was also careful to convey to Xi that their bilateral ties should not be seen through the lens of a third country. Indian television and social media celebrated Modi’s arrival in Tianjin, and his ride from the airport in Xi’s state vehicle as if he was the bridegroom at a wedding. That may have worked to keep audiences at home cheerful and optimistic, but clearly this was no one’s shaadi. It was Xi’s power trip. The others, Modi and Putin included, were props – important props, but props nonetheless.

Economic relations takes precedence over border settlement

India and China have agreed that the disengagement at all the friction points in Ladakh has led to peace and tranquility on the LAC, leaving the two countries to move forward on their economic relations. 

India’s earlier insistence that “de-escalation must follow disengagement” is not heard anymore, just as the demand for status quo ante of April 2020 has also evaporated. At the meeting of the Special Representatives in Delhi in August, the two sides set up expert groups on the border issue, including one to study an “early harvest” agreement, but no timelines have been stated. The term “early harvest” is itself problematic, as it means a settlement in pockets, rather than one that covers the entire LAC, according to a former Indian ambassador to Beijing.

At the summit, Modi and Xi talked about working together “as partners, not as rivals” in the interests of “development” of the region and the world. But it is unclear if China interprets those words in the same way as India does.

The distance remains

There was no joint statement from the Modi-Xi meeting. The separate Indian and Chinese readouts of the meeting broadly echo the same sentiment that “the elephant and the dragon must dance together” in the interest of development. 

But the differences were also clear. China, unlike India, does not feel pushed about settling the border, and believes this issue should not affect bilateral relations. And unlike India, which made a pitch for strategic autonomy and a multipolar Asia, Xi said China believes in a multipolar world and harmonious co-existence. According to Jabin Jacob, a China specialist who teaches at Shiv Nadar University where he also heads the Institute of Himalayan Studies, what the Chinese mean by harmony is order, which can be maintained only through hierarchy. “Harmony in Chinese political thought implies hierarchy – someone leads, others follow – so coexistence means accepting Chinese leadership,” he said in an interview. 

There were no new outcomes for India from this summit.It is not  clear yet if the moves towards normalisation over the last month with a flurry of high-level visits has yielded a lifting of the ban by Beijing on exporting rare earth magnets, fertiliser and tunnel boring machines. 

Modi’s non-attendance of the Victory Day military parade at Tiananmen Square in Beijing was a no-brainer. The parade marks the day when Japan officially surrendered to US forces after its defeat in the war with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. China, which was invaded by Japan during the second world war, fought back the aggression led by both Nationalist and  Communist guerilla forces. Considering the military might and the new weaponry that China showed off at the parade, it would have been strange for the prime minister to attend it when the India-China military standoff has not yet been resolved fully. Plus, the 20 soldiers who were killed in Galwan in June 2020 were from Bihar 16. That is an association Modi would have understandably wished to avoid ahead of the already controversial run-up to the elections in that state. 

A limousine for two

A 45-minute conversation between Modi and Putin in the latter's limousine was perhaps the bigger signal from Tianjin, not just to Trump but also to Xi. The details of what the two spoke about are not in the public realm. But it was a conversation waiting to be had after Trump accused India of funding the Russian war machinery, by buying Russian oil. His trade guru, Peter Navarro, excoriated India's “brahmins” of profiteering from Russian oil, and called Putin’s war “India’s war on Ukraine”. Trump has since gone on to describe the additional 25 per cent tariff on India for buying Russian oil as a “secondary sanction” . 

Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy further piled the pressure on Modi by calling him the day before he left for Tianjin, urging him to have a word with Putin about ending the war. That not a shred of detail of the limousine conversation has found its way out of the car – except for Modi's remark that it was an “insightful exchange” – is an indication that everything on the India-Russia front remains the same. 

India will not discontinue buying Russian oil, and Moscow has discounted prices even more after Trump’s volley against India over this. Though the Modi government might have imagined some years ago that it could cut away from Russia gradually in deference to Washington, that project died with the India-China border clashes. India’s defiance of Trump may complicate the continuing hopes for a trade deal with the Trump administration, but drifting from Russia is no longer a choice for Delhi. It needs Moscow as a buffer against China. 

Delhi has also been apprehensive of Moscow’s expanding relations with Pakistan over the last two decades, including defence ties. All the more so now, with Islamabad’s charm offensive on Trump. At a meeting with Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Putin called Pakistan a “traditional ally” in Asia. A Moscow-Beijing-Islamabad axis is right out of an Indian nightmare.

Russia needs India too, and not just as a buyer of its oil though that is important. 

Under their bromance, Putin and Xi compete for influence in Eurasia. This is why Moscow pushed India’s entry into the SCO, where four of the five Central Asian republics are members, so that it could act as a countervailing force to China’s heft in the region.

India’s options: hedge, hedge, hedge

At this point, hedging – call it balancing if you like – in all directions is Delhi’s only option, as evident too in PM Modi’s Japan visit en route to Tianjin. Modi’s meeting with Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba was praised at home as a message to Xi that India was retaining its strategic autonomy. Like India, Japan is a member of the anti-China Quad (the US and Australia are the other two members) minilateral. At this time, the limitations to such balancing are only too painfully apparent, as with the shock of Trump’s Russia oil purchase tariff. The future of Quad too is up in the air, with Trump openly desirous of a “grand bargain” with China. But India remains hopeful that by balancing a little here, and a little there,  it can still strike a trade deal with the Trump administration. 

In Tianjin, Modi pitched to Xi that India-China ties should not be seen through the lens of a third country. Predictably, China, which views all its relationships through a US lens, did not reciprocate Modi’s sentiments that relationships between two countries must be compartmentalised, and not be allowed to become zero sum games with third countries. 

In Indian minds, Pakistan, not China is the enemy

Prime Minister Modi’s tentative steps to rapprochement with China show that even after a border clash as serious as Galwan and the loss of 20 soldiers, plus the reported loss of territory in 2020,  the Chinese “collusion” with Pakistan during Operation Sindoor, and Beijing’s efforts to initiate trilaterals with neighbours to the exclusion of India, Delhi can speak of normalisation with China with no apparent political costs to the government. 

India was caught sleeping when the Chinese made incursions into Ladakh in 2020, but the government lost none of its political capital for this. In India's national imagination, China remains a distant neighbour, despite a 3,600 km unsettled border. 

To the average Indian, it is Pakistan that poses the bigger danger while China is projected by the Indian establishment as more of “a challenge” than an adversary, with which peaceful co-existence is possible if the relationship is managed correctly. 

Not an era for personality-based diplomacy

Prime Minister Modi’s style of personalised diplomacy was once believed to be a big winner. In reality, it led to complacency in India’s diplomacy with both Trump and Xi. 

Modi’s supposed chemistry with several world leaders has not given him the tools to make a correct or true assessment of their own political imperatives, and how this influences their own policies, including their foreign policies. 

India’s diplomatic missions meanwhile are caught up in endless diaspora matters and ensuring crowds for Yoga day and various other events orchestrated from Delhi. Recall Modi’s generous tweets and phone call to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressing unconditional solidarity and support for Israel in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attack on October 13, 2023? It tied the MEA in knots from which it took days to emerge and put out a statement reiterating its official position on the long  Israel-Palestine conflict. 

Modi’s failure to read Trump and Xi has proved costly. It will take India years to recover from it. 

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