BRICS Summit 2026: Modi and Xi Set to Hold Bilateral Talks; China Calls for 'Long-Term' View of Ties

What Modi and Xi Are Actually Calculating Behind the "Strategic Height" Language

Strip away the diplomatic phrasing - "strategic height," "long-term perspective," "partners helping each other succeed"

• and ask what each side is actually protecting. China is calculating that a stabilised India costs it little and buys it something real: a friendlier voice inside BRICS at a moment when it needs the grouping to look like a coherent counterweight to US tariff pressure and one less active front to manage while it competes with Washington. India is calculating something narrower and more defensive: it cannot afford to let border tension near Taksing escalate into a second active crisis while its trade relationship with China deepens rather than shrinks and it needs the optics of "engagement" without conceding that the border question has moved any closer to resolution.

The Numbers Doing the Talking Officials Won't

India's trade deficit with China has nearly trebled since 2014 - from $37.8 billion to roughly $99.21 billion in FY24-25. That number matters more than any joint statement, because it shows India's structural dependence on Chinese industrial inputs has deepened even as strategic trust has collapsed.

This is the actual asymmetry in the room: China holds economic leverage it barely needs to state aloud, while India holds a border grievance it cannot resolve through trade talk alone. Reading the summit as a "reset" ignores that neither side has moved on the variable that actually defines the relationship - China hasn't reduced its footprint near the LAC's Eastern Sector and India hasn't reduced its import dependence.

Why BRICS Is the Perfect Cover for This

Multilateral summits let both governments do something a standalone bilateral visit could not: meet without either side having to explain domestically why they're "normalising" with an unresolved adversary. For India, appearing at BRICS alongside Xi is politically safer than a dedicated bilateral visit would be, because it can be framed as multilateral diplomacy rather than a concession.

For China, the same summit lets it fold India into a Global South narrative it needs functioning smoothly. Neither government has to say the border standoff - now in its seventh year - remains unresolved, because the summit format never forces that admission.

This is what "managed coexistence" actually looks like from the inside: not trust rebuilt, but two governments finding a low-cost venue to avoid admitting how little has actually changed. For the exam, the lesson isn't that India and China are "improving relations"

• it's that multilateral platforms increasingly function as a way for adversarial neighbours to interact without resolving the underlying dispute at all.