Xi and Modi are meeting at BRICS for the first time in years. Thaw or theater?

What happened

Xi Jinping arrived in New Delhi on September 12 for the 18th BRICS Summit — his first visit to India in roughly seven years. On the sidelines, he and Modi held bilateral talks, their third meeting in as many years after Kazan and Tianjin. India's foreign ministry said both leaders ‘expressed commitment to a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable resolution of the boundary question,’ while Modi stressed that ‘peace and tranquillity’ on the border remains the basis for any further progress. They also pledged to expand trade and investment and address India's large trade deficit with China, and to strengthen cultural, business and transport ties.

Why people disagree

Those calling it a genuine thaw point to real, concrete steps since the deadly 2020 border clash — restored direct flights, eased visas, resumed high-level contacts, and now a leader-level visit that hadn't happened in seven years. Skeptics counter that this looks more like a ‘controlled reopening’ than a real reset: the trade deficit that drove friction in the first place is still unresolved, no concrete details emerged on actually redrawing the Line of Actual Control, and analysts argue the real test isn't summit language but what happens on the ground at the border and in trade talks afterward.

What's still unclear

Whether the border and trade commitments translate into anything concrete — an actual delimitation process, real movement on the trade imbalance — or whether this settles back into managed rivalry once the summit ends. It's also unclear how durable the reset is given each country's separate relationships with the US, Pakistan and the wider Quad/BRICS balancing act.