Managing expectations

This September’s omission, while not unexpected because Russia is a founding member of Brics with close ties to India, still raised eyebrows in Western diplomatic circles in New Delhi. Just days before, on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had publicly urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war.

But the marquee event at this year’s Brics summit was a meeting between Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping. It covered the border, trade, market access and supply-chain issues.

The Ministry of External Affairs later said the leaders welcomed the progress in relations and discussed taking a strategic and long-term view. The ministry said Modi emphasised that peace and tranquillity in the border areas remains an essential basis for the development of relations, and for both sides to observe existing agreements and understandings on border-related issues. It said the leaders expressed “commitment to a fair, reasonable, and mutually acceptable resolution of the boundary question” in the future.

Although both countries have reduced troops along the disputed border since the deadly 2020 clashes in Ladakh, new tensions emerged in July after locals in Arunachal Pradesh spotted Chinese soldiers or graffiti in “a non-demarcated area”, according to sources. 

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the Xi-Modi meeting was an in-depth exchange of views and that China and India should be partners, not rivals. The ministry cited Xi as saying that China has always approached its relations with India from a strategic and long-term perspective, and that he and Modi have guided relations, from starting afresh to making improvements, over the past two years. “This situation has not come easily and needs to be cherished. China and India have different national realities.”

Xi also said the direction of relations should be calibrated. “This is a strategic judgment made based on the development stage and international environment of the two countries.”

China analysts in India then told Business Standard that Xi was trying to convey to his hosts the power difference between the two countries. The term “strategic judgement” appeared for the first time in a Chinese communication with India.

Former foreign secretary Nirupama Menon Rao wrote on X that India and China have acknowledged the necessity of coexistence, competition, and selective cooperation without pretending that mistrust has disappeared.

Xi did not have a large entourage, contrary to earlier media reports, on his first India visit in seven years. Two high officials — Cai Qi, the fifth-ranking member of the seven-member Communist Party of China standing committee, the country’s highest decision-making body, and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi — accompanied him. Xi did not attend the summit’s gala dinner and there was a brief moment during a daytime session when his translation earpiece needed his team’s attention, also prompting Modi to pause mid-speech and ask in Xi’s direction: “Is it ok?”

The timing of Xi’s India visit, ahead of his meeting with US President Donald Trump in Washington, DC, in September, was important for China, too. It would show Xi attended the SCO and Brics summits — largely developing world gatherings — and that China could get along with India when it wanted to. Like India, China has been promoting the “global south”.

Now, the question is whether the Modi-Xi meeting will help bilateral relations move forward or was the meeting the news. 

India-China relations are stuck in a state of distrust. There is likely to be little to no progress on substantial issues — flow of Chinese investments and technology into India and the boundary dispute, Jabin T Jacob, director, Centre for Himalayan Studies, Shiv Nadar University, Uttar Pradesh, said.

“If just meeting is going to be the bar for achievement, then it is a very low bar indeed.”

A Chinese India analyst found pragmatism in the approach.

This meeting broke away from the traditional “zero-sum game” dynamic inherent in past bilateral negotiations, identifying common interests that transcended the two countries’ differences within the Brics multilateral framework, Qian Feng, director of research, National Strategy Institute, Tsinghua University, Beijing, said.  

Rather than avoiding their long-standing differences, the two sides chose to mitigate the negative impact of bilateral tensions through the incremental potential of multilateral cooperation, he said.

“This has opened up a clear path towards stabilising and strengthening the bilateral relationship,” Qian said. “It has charted a practical course.”

Overall, the joint statement topped the list of achievements for India at this year’s summit. India’s ability to organise and convene is an important part of its diplomatic capacity. The fact that it also managed to come out with a statement that everyone signed on to despite the obvious tensions between Iran and the UAE and, of course, between India and China is not a small feat in diplomacy, Jacob said. 

But these declarations don’t mean much without implementation, and Brics, as a collective, does not have the power to implement any of the grand-sounding calls for global institutional reforms. “That’s still the task of individual states.”

Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa are the five primary members. The bloc’s full-time members are Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Plus, Belarus, Bolivia, Kazakhstan, Cuba, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Uganda, Uzbekistan and Vietnam are “partner countries”. China and Russia want to include Pakistan and Turkiye, respectively, but both are opposed by India for slightly different reasons.

While the bloc represents more than 49 per cent of the world population and covers 40 per cent of the global gross domestic product and 26 per cent of trade, the internal differences go beyond India and China and issues related to ongoing wars.

The lack of attention to institutionalisation is a bigger structural problem.

Now, Brics has a large number of members with little in common and there is no way they can work together consistently or regularly without institutional structures. No such structures exist — regular ministerial-level meetings help but are not a substitute, Jacob said.

Qian said actionable outcomes at this year’s summit include inclusive artificial intelligence and sustainable infrastructure-financing.

The “New Delhi declaration” did not aim to address all of China’s demands in a single stroke, he said, adding that instead it fostered consensus on issues such as global-governance reform. Chinese expectations before the summit had included “the implementation guidelines for cross-border trade settlement in local currencies”. India has not been in favour of local-currency trade within Brics, which is “a de-dollarisation campaign” led by China and Russia that would hurt India’s already delicate relations with the US, as well as Indian fears of Chinese control of intra-bloc trading through the renminbi. India has done rupee-rouble settlements with Russia for crude oil though. China has also been pushing its cross-border interbank payment system as an alternative to Western systems. India has resisted that, too. China will host next year’s summit. Maybe the outcomes will be quite different then.