India committed to improving ties with China, Modi tells Xi

TIANJIN: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said New Delhi was committed to improving ties with Beijing in a key meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of a regional security forum on Sunday.

Modi is in China for the first time in seven years to attend a two-day meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, along with Russian President Vladimir Putin and other leaders from Central, South and Southeast Asia and the Middle East in a show of Global South solidarity.

“We are committed to progressing our relations based on mutual respect, trust and sensitivities,” Modi told Xi during the meeting, according to a video clip posted on the Indian leader’s official X account.

The bilateral meeting took place five days after Washington imposed punishing 50% tariffs on Indian goods due to New Delhi’s purchases of Russian oil.

Analysts say Xi and Modi are looking to present a united front against Western pressure.

Modi said an atmosphere of “peace and stability” has been created on their disputed Himalayan border, the site of a prolonged military standoff after deadly troop clashes in 2020, which froze most areas of cooperation between the nuclear-armed strategic rivals. He added that an agreement had been reached between both nations regarding border management, without giving details.

Both leaders had a breakthrough meeting in Russia last year after reaching a border patrol agreement, setting off a tentative thaw in ties that has accelerated in recent weeks as New Delhi seeks to hedge against renewed tariff threats from Washington.

Direct flights between both nations, which have been suspended since 2020, are “being resumed”, Modi added, without providing a timeframe. China had agreed to lift export curbs on rare earths, fertilisers and tunnel boring machines this month during a key visit to India by China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

China opposes Washington’s steep tariffs on India and will “firmly stand with India,” Chinese Ambassador to India Xu Feihong said this month. For decades, Washington painstakingly cultivated ties with New Delhi in the hope that it would act as a regional counterweight to Beijing.

In recent months, China has allowed Indian pilgrims to visit Buddhist sites in Tibet, and both countries have lifted reciprocal tourist visa restrictions.

“Both India and China are engaged in what is likely to be a lengthy and fraught process of defining a new equilibrium in the relationship,” said Manoj Kewalramani, a Sino-Indian relations expert at the Takshashila Institution think tank in Bengaluru.