Inside Beijing’s control room: Why Modi’s meeting with Cai Qi may matter more than the handshake with Xi

The above encounter could tell us more about the trajectory of India–China ties than the handshake everyone photographed.

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Tianjin on August 31, the optics were predictable: smiles for the cameras, calls for peace along the border, and a familiar script about keeping differences in check.

But buried in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) readout was a detail with far greater weight. Modi also sat down with Cai Qi, a Politburo Standing Committee (PSC) member and the director of the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) General Office. According to the MEA, Modi 'shared his vision for the relationship' while Cai promised to expand exchanges 'in line with the leader-level consensus' reached with Xi .

PM @narendramodi met Politburo Standing Committee Member Mr. Cai Qi in Tianjin, China.

Story continues below Advertisement

Remove Ad

Building on, and in line with, the leaders' meeting today, they touched on bilateral economic, political and people-to-people exchanges between India and China.

🇮🇳 🇨🇳 pic.twitter.com/BJGupGDodt

— Randhir Jaiswal (@MEAIndia) August 31, 2025

Related stories

Aishwarya Dabhade

Senior Sub Editor, Editorial and Content|Moneycontrol

• 
  Trump’s UK visit brings Wall Street and Silicon Valley to London with £20 bn AI and tech deals
• 
  Why a raid at Hyundai’s Georgia plant exposed tensions from Seoul to Washington
• 
  The photo that shook Washington: Why Modi, Xi and Putin’s SCO huddle is being called a new world o...

In China’s hierarchy, this is not routine. Meeting Cai signals that Beijing is routing the India reset through the Party’s top control centre, not just its foreign ministry.

Who is Cai Qi and why does he matter?

Cai Qi is one of just seven men on China’s Politburo Standing Committee, the country’s most powerful decision-making body. His official role as director of the CPC’s General Office is less visible to the public but hugely consequential.

The General Office is often described as the Party’s nerve centre. It prepares and circulates Politburo decisions, manages the leader’s schedule, oversees paperwork, and, most importantly, ensures that instructions from Xi Jinping are enforced across ministries and provinces.

Reuters has repeatedly noted Cai’s closeness to Xi, tracing it back to their years in Fujian and Zhejiang, and highlighted his unusually rapid promotion into the PSC. Cai was Beijing’s Party chief, oversaw the 2022 Winter Olympics, and has now become one of Xi’s most trusted lieutenants.

Put simply, this is the office where follow-through happens. If flights, visas, or border trade points are to be reopened, it is Cai’s team that can break bureaucratic logjams and make it happen.

What changed in Tianjin’s messaging

The MEA statement following the Modi–Xi talks in Tianjin carried two lines not seen before:

• India and China are 'development partners and not rivals.'
• Their relations 'should not be seen through a third-country lens'.

Just days earlier, Washington had imposed tariffs of up to 50 percent on Indian exports after citing concerns over India’s continued purchases of Russian oil. By stressing that ties with China should not be filtered through 'a third country,' Delhi appeared to signal that it would not let Washington define its Beijing line.

The statement also folded in tangible priorities: restarting direct flights, easing visa facilitation, resuming the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra, and working to reduce India’s record $99.2 billion trade deficit with China in FY2024/25 . These are practical steps, and Cai Qi’s office is the channel that can push them through China’s system.

From words to deeds: Cai Qi’s role in making things real

The recent Special Representatives (SR) talks in Delhi on August 19 yielded a ten-point consensus on managing the Line of Actual Control and restoring traditional boundary trade points.

Here is where Cai’s General Office comes in:

• Flights and visas: Coordinating aviation regulators, immigration, and public security authorities to move from political intent to airline schedules and consular notices.
• Boundary trade: Reopening traditional markets requires clearances from multiple provincial and local Party units; the General Office can cut across silos.
• Border mechanisms: Any new hotline or deconfliction protocol between Indian and Chinese troops needs Party-level blessing to gain traction across the PLA chain.

The trust signal from Xi

Xi’s decision to route Modi through Cai Qi also says something about the Chinese system itself.  By putting Cai in the room, Xi is showing both trust and control: trust, because Cai is one of his closest allies; control, because the Party centre will directly supervise how the reset is carried out.

For India, that has a double edge. The upside is fewer bureaucratic roadblocks. The downside is that progress will remain tightly tied to Xi’s personal calculus, and can be reversed just as quickly.