Trade and border concerns will be the main topics of discussion when Modi and Xi meet at BRICS.

One of the most anticipated events of the BRICS summit in India will be the meeting between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Beijing confirmed Xi’s attendance at the event on Thursday. This is the Chinese president’s first trip to India since 2019 and since relations soured after fatal border clashes in 2020.

“This is a really crucial moment,” Vrinda Sahai, research analyst in the Security Studies Program at Carnegie India, told CNBC. “It’s a great opportunity to use the BRICS summit as an excuse to have a really substantive bilateral meeting.” Although border disputes and trade imbalances continue to be points of contention between the two nations, the meeting takes place amid improving relations between Beijing and New Delhi and comes after Modi’s visit to China for the SCO summit last year.

The agenda is anticipated to include border disputes between Beijing and New Delhi, which date back decades and resulted in a war between the two nations in 1962. The two sides’ relationship has significantly improved over the past year, despite the 2020 issue sending relations into a deep freeze.

During their August meeting, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and India’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval “expressed satisfaction at the steady resumption of people-to-people and cross-border exchanges,” including border trade and pilgrimages over Himalayan passes. India and China have resumed direct flights, a sign of warming relations. New Delhi has also loosened restrictions on Chinese investment in India.

India is actively investing in other ties as a result of tense trade and tariff relations with the second Trump administration, which coincides with New Delhi’s reconciliation with China.

Last week, Modi and Xi met on the fringes of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Kyrgyzstan, where they signed the Bishkek Declaration alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin and other participants, denouncing military attacks against Iran without mentioning the United States. Bajpaee stated that “recent Indian government actions confirm India’s continuing commitment to strategic hedging.” He cited trade agreements with the United Kingdom and the European Union, as well as resource agreements the nation has made with Australia, Indonesia, and Uzbekistan.

Beijing reportedly denied the Indian Army access to crucial patrolling locations and encroached on land in the northeastern Indian border state of Arunachal Pradesh in August, indicating that mistrust between China and India persists despite a breakthrough in relations. Sahai of Carnegie India stated that it’s critical for spectators to control expectations.

″[BRICS is] a group that came into being [for] bringing reforms in the existing financial and global governance architectures. It was not something that was aimed at solving geopolitical issues … It gets conflated with Russia and China’s border issues, but that is not what the group is trying to solve,” she pointed out.

Trade relations between India and China are a key focus, as India faces a substantial trade deficit with China, amounting to $112.16 billion. In the last fiscal year, bilateral trade reached $151.1 billion. India seeks to address these imbalances and improve market access, which was a topic at the BRICS summit. India is vulnerable to this relationship due to reliance on Chinese goods, particularly in green energy infrastructure.

Additionally, trade restrictions have been imposed on China for products like aluminium foil and electrical steel. Recent shifts include India emerging as a major supplier for Apple, despite disruptions caused by Chinese restrictions on technology. Any potential foreign direct investment will be approached cautiously, aligned with geopolitical factors, as China’s President Xi plans to visit India with a larger delegation than before.