Modi and Xi meet in Delhi on the first Chinese visit in seven years
The two leaders were due to hold talks on the margins of the BRICS summit on Saturday. The boundary question, and a run of small normalisation steps since 2024, frame what is on the table.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi was due to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in New Delhi on Saturday, the first visit to India by a Chinese leader in seven years. Xi last came in 2019, months before the confrontation in eastern Ladakh sent the relationship to its lowest point in decades.
The meeting is the most visible step yet in a slow, deliberate effort to put the relationship back on a working footing. It has not resolved the boundary question, and Hindustan Times reports that a trust deficit continues to constrain what the two sides can agree.
What changed in 2024
The turning point came in October 2024, when India and China reached an understanding that ended the prolonged military standoff in Ladakh. Modi and Xi met days later in Russia and agreed on measures aimed at improving ties and addressing the boundary question.
The months since have produced a list of small, concrete restorations rather than a breakthrough. Direct flights resumed. The Kailash Mansarovar Yatra was revived. Traditional border trade restarted through three designated routes. India eased visa procedures for Chinese nationals.
Each of those is modest on its own. Together they describe a relationship being rebuilt in the areas where rebuilding is least contentious — travel, pilgrimage, commerce — while the harder questions are left to a separate track.
The border, stated plainly by both sides
At a meeting in Beijing in August, National Security Adviser Ajit Doval set out the Indian position on what the normalisation rests on. "The normalcy we have witnessed in our relationship has been a direct result of both sides maintaining peace and tranquility in the border areas," Doval said, according to PTI.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has framed it in terms of communication and mutual trust, saying the two countries should "be good friends that enjoy good neighbourliness and be good partners that contribute to each other's success", also reported by PTI.
Those two formulations are not in conflict, but they emphasise different things. One makes the border the condition; the other makes the relationship the frame. The gap between them is roughly the gap the talks have to work in.
Arunachal Pradesh remains unsettled
The thaw has not removed friction along the Line of Actual Control. Reports of fresh face-offs between Indian and Chinese troops emerged in July from the Taksing area of Arunachal Pradesh's Upper Subansiri district.
India has not publicly provided details of those reports. China's foreign ministry said on 13 August that the "border situation is generally stable at the moment". Both sides have agreed to keep using diplomatic and military channels to avoid misunderstanding and miscalculation, and the July reports were followed by corps commander-level talks at the Wacha-Damai border meeting point.
Both governments point to those channels when describing the relationship as stabilising.
Arriving with the senior leadership
Xi left Beijing on Saturday for the summit at Modi's invitation. His entourage includes Cai Qi, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and director of the Central Committee's General Office, and Wang Yi, the foreign minister and a Political Bureau member, Xinhua reported.
The composition matters for reading the visit. A delegation carrying both the party's general office and the foreign ministry at Political Bureau level is equipped to discuss more than summit business.
Xinhua reported that Xi is expected to advance proposals on Global South cooperation at the summit, as he did at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting in Bishkek.
A commercial signal, timed to the visit
Hours before the meeting, China Southern Airlines announced it would resume scheduled passenger services on the Guangzhou–New Delhi route from 21 September, ending a six-year suspension, Global Times reported. The carrier said that once the route restarts it will operate more than 100 weekly flights across its eight round-trip routes in South Asia.
It is the latest in a sequence. Air China resumed its Beijing–Delhi service in April, the second Chinese carrier route to India to return. China Eastern Airlines had restarted Kunming–Kolkata on 18 April. IndiGo began a daily non-stop Kolkata–Shanghai service on 30 March, building on its reinstated Kolkata–Guangzhou flights and subsequent operations from Delhi.
Those routes had been suspended through the pandemic and the period following the Doklam and Galwan standoffs, and their return followed the Ministry of External Affairs confirming that direct flights would resume.
Air links are a reasonable proxy for how far normalisation has actually travelled, because they require both governments to agree on the practical detail — slots, frequencies, visas — rather than only on language. On that measure the relationship in September 2026 is further along than at any point since 2020, and still some way short of where it was before.
