In October 1962, while the world was fixated on the Cuban missile crisis, China and India went to war across their Himalayan frontier. In the context of a 13-day superpower standoff, the month-long Sino-Indian war became a sideshow. More than six decades later, history isn’t repeating itself, but it is rhyming. Once again, the world is focused on the prospects for rapprochement between Washington and Moscow—this time in the context of the war in Ukraine—while overlooking the evolving relationship between Beijing and New Delhi.
It was arguably justified to see the Sino-Indian relationship as secondary to the U.S.-Soviet relationship in 1962. However, this is no longer the case, given the geopolitical heft of China and India as the world’s most populous countries (accounting for nearly 40 percent of the world’s population) and the world’s second- and soon-to-be third-largest economies.
Put simply, what happens in this relationship matters to the rest of the world.
For this reason, attention should be paid to the summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in China at the end of this month. Modi’s first trip to the country since 2018 is significant. It marks the culmination of efforts to reset bilateral relations following their border clashes in 2020, which was the worst period of hostility between both countries in more than four decades.
In a broader sense, though, the meeting should be seen as a reaffirmation of both countries’ long-standing commitment to strategic autonomy in their respective foreign policies. China and India have long maintained convergent worldviews. Both see themselves as self-professed civilizational states, both seek to be leaders (or “voices”) of the global south, and both want a more equitable distribution of power in a multipolar global order. This convergence has manifested in several areas, from their voting patterns in the United Nations to their relations with weak and nondemocratic regimes, as well as development imperatives in both countries taking precedence over climate concerns.
The downturn in both countries’ relations with the United States, in turn, has offered the rationale for Beijing and New Delhi to de-escalate tensions with each other. Consequently, it’s time for the West to reassess its long-standing position of viewing India as a counterbalance to China. India was never going to be the bulwark against China that the West (and the United States in particular) thought it was. And Modi’s China visit marks a potential turning point—toward a more coordinated position between both countries on their foreign policies.
China and India’s commitments to strategic autonomy are marked by three distinctive characteristics.
First, a development-driven foreign policy: Both countries have long stressed that the purpose of foreign policy is to create an external environment that is conducive to domestic economic development. Second, a neighborhood-first diplomacy, with both countries seeking to stabilize relations with neighboring countries amid a more volatile relationship with the United States. Third, they want to ensure that their actions are not perceived as overtly anti-Western. Both want to be seen as reformist rather than revisionist powers.
So far, both countries have pursued these goals in parallel rather than in cooperation. However, it is telling that Modi’s visit to China is for the purpose of attending the summit meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). This is a regional body that emerged in the 1990s with an initial focus on resolving border disputes between Central Asian states but has evolved into a forum aimed at projecting an alternative worldview to that of the West. Members include China, India, Iran, Pakistan, and Russia.
India was always somewhat ambivalent about its participation in the SCO. Modi did not attend last year’s summit, and when India held the SCO presidency in 2022-2023, it decided to hold a virtual summit, alluding to efforts to downplay the organization’s significance while it prioritized its presidency of the Group of 20 in the same year. This was in line with New Delhi’s position to project a benign worldview that is non-Western, but not explicitly anti-Western. But the downturn in India’s relations with Washington has prompted New Delhi to rediscover the utility of the SCO.
A key point to watch will be a possible revival of the long-dormant Russia-India-China (RIC) trilateral grouping on the summit sidelines. Emerging in the 1990s, the RIC framework was regularly employed by the three countries to voice criticism of the U.S.-led liberal international order, with particular concerns being expressed about Western efforts to erode principles of territorial integrity and sovereignty on the grounds of human rights. As its relations with the United States deepened and deteriorated with China, India distanced itself from this initiative.
A revival of the RIC would signal a reversal of this trend and a greater willingness by Beijing and New Delhi (along with Moscow) to amplify their voices and align their positions on global issues. Compared with the 1990s, they will be doing so from a position of strength, with the ability to match their statements with more substantive actions than before.
An example of this can be seen through the three countries increasingly settling bilateral trade in their own currencies, indicating efforts to develop alternative payment systems aimed at circumventing Western-controlled financial infrastructure. Leveraging each of their advantages—China’s manufacturing prowess, India’s service sector strengths, and Russia’s natural resource endowment—they can work to reduce their dependence on the United States to diversify their export markets and ultimately reshape global trade flows.
Yet one meeting alone between Xi and Modi will not substantively improve China-India relations. Mutual suspicion remains entrenched in the bilateral relationship, fueled by an unresolved border dispute and other emerging (or reemerging) fault lines. These range from Tibet (given disagreement about the Dalai Lama’s succession plan) to water disputes (amid China’s plans to construct the world’s largest hydroelectric power project across a river that traverses both countries) and Pakistan (rooted in Beijing’s “all-weather” relationship with Islamabad, which is under the spotlight during ongoing India-Pakistan hostilities).
The two countries’ neighborhood policies are also at loggerheads, particularly in South Asia, where China is a leading trade partner, source of foreign investment, and increasingly important defense partner for several countries. Leveraging New Delhi’s sometimes difficult relations with neighboring countries and the low level of economic integration in the region—intraregional trade in South Asia is among the lowest in the world—Beijing is spearheading new regional groupings. These are backed by China’s enormous financial resources and diplomatic capital, and they include a trilateral meeting of ministers from Bangladesh, China, and Pakistan in June, and a recent meeting of the foreign ministers from Afghanistan, China, and Pakistan in Kabul.
Early indications are that both countries are willing to acknowledge and work toward overcoming some of these areas of disagreement. Last week’s visit by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi to India—and discussion with his Indian counterparts through the special representatives’ framework that was revived in December—indicates a renewed appetite to resolve the border issue. Both sides notably agreed on the need for “a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable framework for settlement of the boundary question,” and they referenced a 2005 bilateral agreement—a previous high point on the issue.
This has been accompanied by people-centric initiatives, such as the relaxation of visa restrictions and the recent announcement on the reestablishment of direct flights between both countries.
Undergirding the rapprochement are both countries’ increasingly difficult relations with the United States. Both countries’ relations with Washington were in a precarious position even before U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term began. While the second Trump administration has adopted a somewhat more conciliatory approach toward China for now by postponing tariffs and diluting semiconductor export controls, this has not changed Beijing’s perception of Washington as an unreliable and fickle partner.
Although less pronounced, there has been a similar deterioration of relations between India and the United States. Despite a strong bipartisan consensus in Washington on engaging India over the past three decades, Indo-U.S. relations had become increasingly strained even before the recent downturn under the Trump administration. Claims that the West is seeking to keep India down have gained momentum in Indian political discourse amid Western criticism of India’s democratic credentials in the run-up to last year’s parliamentary election as well as human rights concerns emanating from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party ’s Hindutva ideology and allegations of crony capitalism.
This was supplemented by geopolitical frictions emanating from allegations of Indian complicity in assassination plots in Canada and the United States in 2023 as well as scrutiny of the Indo-Russian relationship and India’s increasing purchase of Russian crude oil following the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
In countries where anti-colonial sentiment remains well-entrenched, public opinion is highly sensitive to any signs that either country’s sovereignty or status are being challenged. Because of this, the Trump administration’s latest actions of cozying up to Islamabad so soon after a conflict between India and Pakistan—and referring India as a “dead economy” while slapping 50 percent tariffs on it—have been the final nail in the coffin of the bilateral relationship.
The damage is not irreversible, given the strong bonds between both countries—from the 5 million-strong Indian diaspora and more than 300,000 Indian students in the United States to technology collaboration and defense cooperation. But a long-held belief that India and the United States maintain a special or privileged partnership has dissipated.
One of the drivers of the Sino-Indian rapprochement is economic: the recognition that India cannot fulfil its ambition to emerge as a global manufacturing hub without components and raw materials sourced from China. India’s dependence on China as a key trade partner, along with the structural challenges facing the Indian economy, undermine the narrative of India as a beneficiary of the push in the West to de-risk or diversify supply chains away from China. India’s contribution to global manufacturing is less than 10 percent that of China, and manufacturing as a share of GDP has stalled despite efforts by the Modi government to present India as a more attractive investment destination.
The effort to de-escalate bilateral tensions has opened up space for both countries to explore new opportunities for collaboration, including renewed economic engagement. Chinese and Indian companies are exploring joint venture opportunities in several areas, including critical and emerging technologies.
As the world grapples with the decline of U.S. power and the shift toward multipolarity, and as both China and India continue their rise as global powers, the Sino-Indian convergence of interests will continue.
At the very least, this should help Washington to develop more realistic expectations of what India can deliver in the context of the U.S. strategic rivalry with China. At most, it shows that the long-held conviction of India as a counterbalance to China is increasingly outdated in the emerging multipolar international order. This threatens to undermine one of the key strategic rationales that formed the basis for and bedrock of the Indo-U.S. relationship over the past three decades.
The post China and India May Be Moving Toward a More Coordinated Foreign Policy appeared first on Foreign Policy.
