The Chinese government confirmed this Thursday (10) that the country’s president, Xi Jinping, will participate in the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi, on September 12th and 13th, at the invitation of Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi.
This will be the Chinese president’s first visit to India in almost seven years. The last one was on October 11 and 12, 2019 for an informal bilateral summit in Mamallapuram in the state of Tamil Nadu. A first informal summit between Modi and Xi had previously taken place in April 2018, in Wuhan, China.
The confirmation from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs comes at a time of increasing normalization of relations between the two countries, which had a moment of high tension in 2020, with the clash between the military in the Galwan Valley, on the border. In the same year, a pause began in direct flights between the two countries and in Indian pilgrimages to Xizang (Tibet).
Although restrictions were initiated by the pandemic, they were not resumed until 2025, when the two countries agreed to resume pilgrimage to Mount Kailash and Lake Mansarovar (holy sites for Tibetan Buddhism) and direct air services as part of attempts to normalize bilateral relations.
The two leaders continued to meet in recent years, on the sidelines of G20 and Brics summits, without much progress, until October 2024, when they met in Kazan, Russia, at the 16th Brics Summit. Modi said that meeting “set the course for the development of India-China relations” and that relations “returned to a positive path”.
In August 2025, Modi returned to China for the first time since 2018, to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Tianjin. In the bilateral meeting with Xi, the prime minister stated that “India and China are partners, not adversaries, with much more consensus than disagreements”. Xi said the two countries should “not let the border issue define the overall relationship.” Modi also highlighted the resumption of direct flights and the reopening of pilgrimage routes to Xizang.
Last year, the rapprochement coincided with the cooling of relations between New Delhi and Washington. The Trump administration had decided to raise tariffs on all Indian products, reaching 50%. In Tianjin, Modi stated that the two countries defend “strategic autonomy and independent diplomacy” and that “their bilateral relations will not be influenced by third parties”.
Eight points on the border
The BRICS summit will take place weeks after a breakthrough in negotiations regarding territorial differences between the two countries.
China and India have around 2,000 kilometers of border, of which 125,000 km² are under dispute, divided into three parts: in southern Tibet (around 90,000 km²), where Great Britain drew the “McMahon Line” in 1914, a line not recognized by China and which came to be controlled by India. In the central sector of the border, there are two thousand km² in dispute, under current Indian control. In Aksai Chin, around 33 thousand km², historically controlled by China, was claimed by India in 1959.
The current agreement between the two countries in this dispute is the Line of Actual Control (LAC), a de facto military demarcation line, not recognized as a border, that separates the areas controlled by each country.
On August 25, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and India’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval met in Beijing for the 25th round of talks on the border issue. The meeting resulted in eight points of consensus.
These include the creation of a Border Delimitation Expert Group and a Border Management Working Group, two new meeting points for high-level military commanders, and two new military hotline channels in the eastern and central sections of the border. The next round of talks between special representatives is scheduled for 2027, in India.
On September 6 and 7, high-level military representatives from the two countries held two meetings in the eastern Himalayan border region, according to Indian Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randil Jaiswal.
First BRICS summit with Putin outside Russia in seven years
This will be Russian President Vladimir Putin’s first in-person summit outside Russia since 2019, when the bloc met in Brazil.
In 2023, Putin did not go to the summit in South Africa. In 2024, the BRICS met in Kazan, in Russia itself. In 2025, in Brazil, the Russian president also did not attend: Russia was represented again by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergei Lavrov.
Source: www.brasildefato.com.br
