DA Editorial Desk
August 21, 2026
A year on from Narendra Modi’s Tianjin trip — his first visit to China in seven years, undertaken to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit — it is worth asking what the handshake with Xi Jinping actually purchased. At the time, both leaders spoke the language of reconciliation: partners, not rivals; opportunities, not threats. Border disengagement had already progressed, flights and visas were being restored, and Wang Yi’s advance visit to Delhi produced a flurry of agreements. Commentators called it a thaw. The word was accurate, but a thaw is not a resolution.
What has followed since confirms that reading. Wang Yi returned to New Delhi in January for further talks, and a new Chinese ambassador finally arrived after a fifteen-month vacancy — modest, procedural steps rather than breakthroughs. Trade ties have edged forward too, with Indian firms exploring joint ventures in EV batteries and charging infrastructure. But the substance of what divides the two countries remains untouched: the Line of Actual Control is calmer, not settled; India’s military leadership still describes China’s role in the region, including its ties to Pakistan, in adversarial terms; and neither side has moved on the deeper structural rivalry over regional influence, supply chains, or the terms of a genuinely multipolar Asia.
The Tianjin meeting’s real value was never going to be a border settlement produced by summit photography. Its value was optionality. For India, warming with Beijing offered leverage against an unpredictable Washington, particularly after punitive US tariffs tied to Russian oil purchases. For China, courting Delhi complicated any American strategy of using India as a counterweight. Both sides got what they wanted without conceding what they value most.
That is the honest way to read the year since: not as a reset, but as a hedge, pursued by two governments that have concluded distrust can be managed without being resolved. Expect the pattern to continue — more ministerial visits, more working groups, no fundamental shift in how either capital sees the other. A relationship built on parallel self-interest can be stable. It is a different thing from being trusting, and India’s China policy in the year ahead will still be written with that distinction firmly in mind.