Xi Heads to New Delhi for a BRICS Summit Held Against a Thawing China-India Backdrop
Xi Jinping travels to New Delhi this weekend for the 18th BRICS summit, arriving as Putin and Iran's leadership gather under Modi's hostmanship, with wars in the Middle East and Ukraine and a global trade fight on the agenda — and a cautious China-India thaw as the meeting's real subtext.
On Saturday, Xi Jinping lands in New Delhi for the 18th BRICS leaders' summit, a two-day gathering hosted by Narendra Modi that will also seat Vladimir Putin — in India for the first time since December — and Iran's leadership. People's Daily confirmed the trip on Thursday in a post that raced up Weibo's ranking, and the summit's opening coincides with something quieter but arguably bigger: the most visible thaw between China and India in years.
The host's guest list makes the point. Putin's presence — his first visit since late 2025 — and Modi's Friday talks with him underline India's balancing act between an old strategic partnership and the Western camp, while Xi's arrival the next day puts the two Asian giants' leaders in the same city for the first time since relations froze along the disputed Himalayan border. German media commentary syndicated by Deutsche Welle was blunt about the catalyst: Handelsblatt argues that Washington's whipsawing trade policy pushed New Delhi and Beijing toward each other, while the Frankfurter Allgemeine counters that the warmth is tactical and trust between the two capitals remains thin.
Beijing's own framing of the meeting came at Thursday's foreign-ministry briefing, where an Indian journalist asked what China expects from a summit unfolding while the Middle East and Ukraine wars grind on. Spokesperson Mao Ning answered with China's line about resolving disputes through dialogue and negotiation — and, in the background material the ministry has been publishing all week, a longer claim: that BRICS has grown from an economist's acronym into a bloc that speaks for the "Global South," and that the gathering should push what Chinese media call "greater BRICS cooperation" toward institutional form.
Domestic coverage has been preparing that frame for days. CCTV's evening bulletin showcased a special economic zones cooperation center in Hangzhou built under the BRICS banner, and state television's summit explainer quotes international figures praising China as the mechanism's steadiest supporter — with a detail worth noting for the year ahead: China takes over the grouping's rotating chairmanship next year.
For an international reader, the signal to watch is not the communiqué but the choreography. An American trade war has simultaneously annoyed India, pushed Russia closer to both Asian powers, and given Beijing an opening to pitch itself as the stabilizing alternative — the reading German commentators made explicit this week. Whether the New Delhi meeting converts that overlap into anything durable is exactly what the Frankfurter Allgemeine doubts. The two-day agenda lists the wars and oil; the subtext is what a post-American trading order looks like to the countries building it.