Wang Yi to meet PM Modi tomorrow as China courts India: What Beijing wants, what Delhi gains | Explained

File Photo - Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs, Wang Yi (L) meets with Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi in New Delhi on August 13, 2016.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is on a three-day official visit to India starting today, and is scheduled to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday. His packed schedule also includes meetings with External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval as the two countries consider resuming border trade after a five-year halt, amid shifting geopolitical alignments.

The main focus of Wang’s visit is to restart long-stalled talks on the border dispute, take stock of weak trade and economic ties, and explore small steps toward improving relations between India and China -- all at a time when India’s ties with the US under President Donald Trump are growing more tense.

Resumption of boundary talks

The Ministry of External Affairs has confirmed that Wang will hold the 24th round of Special Representatives’ (SR) talks on the boundary issue with NSA Ajit Doval.

These talks are only the second since the deadly clashes in Galwan Valley in June 2020, which had plunged relations to their lowest point in decades. The previous round was held in Beijing in December 2024. That meeting was itself a follow-up to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s agreement in Kazan, Russia, to revive dialogue mechanisms frozen since the clashes.

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The October 2024 agreement to disengage troops from the last friction points at Demchok and Depsang formally ended the Ladakh standoff. Since then, both sides have cautiously rolled out measures, from diplomatic talks to reopening people-to-people exchanges, to consolidate a fragile thaw.

Wang’s Delhi visit is intended to build on this momentum, while also preparing the ground for PM Modi’s planned trip to Tianjin, China, later this month, where he is expected to meet President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit.

Thaw in Travel, pilgrimages and trade

There are clear signs that India and China are slowly moving back toward normal ties. India has started giving tourist visas to Chinese visitors again, while Beijing has reopened two pilgrimage routes in Tibet for Indian travellers after a gap of five years. Efforts are also underway to restart border trade through the Lipulekh, Shipki La, and Nathu La passes.

Talks are also progressing on restoring direct flights between the two countries, which have been suspended since the Covid-19 pandemic. If flights resume in September, passengers will no longer need to travel through transit hubs like Hong Kong or Singapore, making travel faster and easier.

Trump’s tariffs complicate India’s calculus

While Delhi and Beijing patch up ties, relations with Washington are fraying.

Trump has hiked tariffs on Indian exports to 50 per cent, up from an initial 25 per cent. He has justified the move as retaliation for India’s continued purchase of discounted Russian oil, which now makes up 36 per cent of India’s crude imports.

Trump has lashed out at New Delhi in unusually sharp terms, describing India’s economy as “dead” and calling its tariff barriers “obnoxious.”

Indian officials counter that the US tariffs are “unfair” and “unjustified,” pointing out that while India does maintain higher duties on some agricultural imports, it keeps tariffs on coal, pharmaceuticals, aircraft parts, and machinery at zero to low rates. They also note the irony that the US and Europe continue to buy Russian fertilisers and chemicals, even as Washington penalises India for crude purchases.

On the other hand, Trump last week delayed high US tariffs on Chinese goods from snapping back into place for another 90 days. If the deadline were not extended, then US duties on China would have shot back up to where they stood in April, when the tariff war between the world’s largest trading nations was at its peak. At that time, Trump had cranked up blanket tariffs on Chinese imports to 145 per cent, and China had retaliated with 125 per cent duties on US goods.

Beijing’s supportive signals

China, locked in its own tariff wars with Trump, has quickly aligned rhetorically with India.

“Give the bully an inch, he will take a mile,” wrote Xu Feihong, China’s ambassador to India, in a social media post. He was responding to Wang Yi’s earlier remarks denouncing tariffs as “a weapon to suppress other countries.”

Earlier this year, Xi called for relations to resemble a harmonious “dragon-elephant tango” in a nod to the two countries’ symbolic creatures.

In fact, Beijing backed New Delhi over the tariff onslaught by Trump. In a post on social media platform X, Feihong has said, "Give the bully an inch, he will take a mile."

He also shared a quote, "Using tariffs as a weapon to suppress other countries violates the UN Charter, undermines WTO rules and is both unpopular and unsustainable," which is an excerpt from the talks between China's foreign minister Wang Yi and Brazil President Lula's chief advisor, Celso Amorim.

Beyond words, Beijing has allowed limited resumption of urea exports to India — a symbolic, but notable, step given India’s reliance as the world’s largest importer of the fertiliser.

Concerns in Washington over strategic drift

The US strategic establishment is sounding alarms. Former National Security Advisor John Bolton, speaking to CNN, warned: “Trump’s tariffs against India are intended to hurt Russia but they could push India closer to Russia and to China to oppose these tariffs.”

He added: “Trump’s leniency on the Chinese, and heavy-handed tariffs on India, jeopardise decades of American efforts to bring India away from Russia and China.”

Analysts have echoed Bolton’s concerns, noting that Trump’s transactional approach risks undermining the very Indo-Pacific strategy built over two decades.

PM Modi’s upcoming China visit

PM Modi is scheduled to travel first to Japan on August 29, and then to Tianjin, China, for the SCO summit (August 31–September 1). This would mark his first China visit in seven years, since the Qingdao SCO summit in June 2018.

Beijing has welcomed the prospect. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun told CNN: “We believe that with the concerted effort of all parties, the Tianjin summit will be a gathering of solidarity, friendship and fruitful results.”

A Modi–Xi meeting in Tianjin would signal another step in the gradual reset of ties, even as Trump’s tariff escalation pushes New Delhi to rebalance its foreign policy options.

The larger triangle: US, India and China

India’s ties with the US had deepened under Joe Biden, who cast India as a central partner in Washington’s Indo-Pacific vision. While they were expected to grow stronger and deeper in the second term of Trump, his return has instead unsettled that trajectory.

His “America First” tariff strategy now targets India alongside adversaries like China and even allies in Europe. Ironically, as Bolton underlined, the policy risks producing “the worst outcome for the United States” — a drift of India closer to both Russia and China.

For New Delhi, the coming weeks will be a test: whether to double down on repairing China ties and keep space with Moscow, or to weather Trump’s tariffs in hope of a recalibration in Washington.