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New Delhi has hedged more toward China without articulating any conditions. Beijing is taking full advantage.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (left) met China’s President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the SCO Summit in Tianjin, China, Aug. 31, 2025.
The Modi government has built its foreign policy around the claim that India has graduated from hedging to civilizational confidence. Its deepening rapprochement with Beijing since Donald Trump’s return to the White House suggests the opposite. New Delhi has hedged more toward China without articulating any condition under which it would hedge back. Beijing noticed, as is clear from a recent revelation.
On May 8, China’s state broadcaster CCTV aired interviews with two engineers from the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), confirming for the first time that Chinese technical personnel were physically present at Pakistani operational bases during the four-day conflict between India and Pakistan in May 2025. Zhang Heng described the experience of working in 50-degree heat as fighter jets took off and air-raid sirens wailed. Xu Da spoke of the J-10CE as “a child we had nurtured, cared for, and finally handed over to the user,” adding that its combat performance (including the reported downing of at least one Indian Rafale) “didn’t feel sudden at all.”
