Xi Jinping met Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in New Delhi on September 12, his first visit to India in seven years. India's foreign ministry said the two leaders reaffirmed that differences should not become disputes, while Chinese state media said they reached an important consensus on being partners.
What did India's statement say? Modi and Xi welcomed the steady progress in relations since they met in Tianjin in August 2025, India's Ministry of External Affairs said. Modi stressed mutual respect, mutual understanding and mutual benefit, and said peace and tranquillity in the border areas remained an important basis for ties. The leaders committed to a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable boundary settlement and called for addressing structural trade imbalances and supply-chain concerns.
What did Beijing's account say? Xi told Modi that China and India are partners rather than rivals and opportunities rather than threats to each other's development, CNA reported, citing Xinhua. He said their two meetings in two years had taken relations from a "restart" to an "upgrade," and called for more direct flights and people-to-people exchanges and for advancing the boundary question and wider ties on parallel tracks. In Beijing's version, Modi said India's policy and position on Taiwan and Tibet-related issues had not changed and that India would not allow any forces to conduct anti-China activities on its soil. India's own press release did not mention Taiwan.
What is the backdrop? Indian and Chinese troops clashed in Ladakh's Galwan Valley in June 2020, killing at least 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers, and both sides then kept heavy forces on the disputed border until a 2024 disengagement agreement gradually eased tensions, Liberty Times reported, citing Reuters. The clash came the year after Xi's previous visit to India in 2019.
What do Indian analysts say? Srikanth Kondapalli, a Jawaharlal Nehru University professor, told CNA the talks were not an "ice-breaking" and that each side had its own calculations, with the border still the sticking point. The border matters far more to India than to China, whose priority is trade, he said. India imported $131 billion of Chinese goods in fiscal 2025-26 against $19 billion of exports, a record deficit of more than $100 billion. Namrata Hasija, a research fellow at the Centre for China Analysis and Strategy, told CNA the meeting was only a temporary truce and that she did not expect it to improve relations.
Figures referenced: Xi Jinping. — JudgeMarket.
