Xi Jinping touched down in New Delhi on September 12, marking his first visit to India since October 2019. The trip, timed to coincide with the 18th BRICS Summit, also represents the first time Xi has held a bilateral meeting on Indian soil since Chinese and Indian troops clashed in the Galwan Valley in June 2020, a confrontation that killed soldiers on both sides and froze relations between the world’s two most populous nations.
Seven years of ice, slowly thawing
The Galwan Valley clash didn’t just cost lives. It effectively demolished the political infrastructure connecting Asia’s two largest economies. High-level engagement cratered. Military standoffs along the Line of Actual Control, the disputed border running through some of the world’s most inhospitable terrain, became the defining feature of the relationship.
Modi and Xi met on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Kazan in October 2024. They met again in Tianjin on August 31, 2025. Each encounter was brief, scripted, and designed to signal that talking was happening without committing to much of substance.
The numbers behind the tension
