India Think Tank: Modi-Xi BRICS Meeting Only Pauses Conflict

The BRICS summit was held in South Africa this month. Aside from economic cooperation, bilateral meetings among the leaders also drew significant attention. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping held talks during the summit. Bilateral relations have remained tense since the border clash in 2020, and this encounter has been interpreted by observers as the "Modi-Xi meeting." However, several domestic Indian think tanks published analyses after the meeting, arguing that the move is merely a temporary "truce" arrangement and does not genuinely break the long-standing confrontational stalemate between the two sides.

Looking back over the past decade, India and China have frequently clashed over border demarcation, trade imbalances, and regional security. The border standoff in the summer of 2020 resulted in military casualties on both sides. Although subsequent diplomatic mediation has brought intermittent easing of tensions, both sides maintain high-level military alerts in sensitive areas such as Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh. Such structural contradictions make it difficult for any brief high-level meeting to produce fundamental changes.

Under the multilateral framework of the BRICS summit, the talks between Modi and Xi were arranged as an informal sidebar meeting, where the two sides primarily exchanged views on trade facilitation, energy cooperation, and shared positions within the BRICS mechanism. Indian think tanks pointed out that the agenda mostly focused on economic dimensions, lacking substantive discussions on security and border issues. Even though both sides exchanged friendly messages after the meeting, no concrete border crisis de-escalation mechanisms or confidence-building measures were announced.

From a geopolitical perspective, the trajectory of India-China relations directly impacts the balance of power in Asia and globally. In recent years, countries such as the United States and Japan have strengthened defense cooperation with India, intending to build a strategic circle in the Indian Ocean to counterbalance China. If India-China relations remain merely in a stage of "temporary truce," it could prompt further intervention by external powers and increase uncertainty in regional security. Conversely, if both sides can seek broader multilateral coordination on the BRICS platform, it will help mitigate the risk of unilateral confrontation.

In summary, the Modi-Xi meeting during the BRICS summit provided a window for dialogue in symbolic terms, but according to assessments by Indian think tanks, the meeting did not touch upon the core contradictions of bilateral relations and only served as a temporary easing of tensions. In the future, lacking concrete policy agreements and trust mechanisms, the rivalry between India and China at the border and strategic levels will likely continue, posing long-term challenges to regional stability and global economic cooperation.