Chinese leader Xi Jinping will visit India for the BRICS summit from Sept. 12 to Sept. 13 with a large delegation of around 400 officials. This would be Xi’s first visit to India in seven years, following his last visit in 2019, a year before the bloody Galwan conflict.
Global geopolitical analysts told Vision Times that Xi’s visit with a large delegation reflects Beijing’s desire to overcome the mistrust between the two nations that deepened after the 2020 Galwan crisis, while also seeking better access to the massive Indian market.
This weekend’s summit will be attended by the five founding BRICS members — India, China, Brazil, Russia, and South Africa — which will be joined by the six countries added in recent years: Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Indonesia. Experts said this is a significant development amid the wars in Iran and Ukraine and also indicates the rise of the Global South as a geopolitical bloc.
China’s outreach to India could also send a strong message to the United States, with which India has been engaged in lengthy and protracted trade deal negotiations without reaching a final agreement. While two experts believe Xi’s participation with a large delegation could accelerate the conclusion of the agreement, another said it would make little difference to the “endless haggling” over the final deal.
Xi’s first visit in 7 years
Xi’s last visit to India was from Oct. 11 to Oct. 12, 2019, when he visited Chennai, Tamil Nadu, for the second India-China Informal Summit with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. A year later, bilateral ties dramatically worsened after the June 2020 Galwan Valley clash, leading to a massive military buildup on both sides of the disputed border.
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“China and India are neighbors, competitors and, potentially, geopolitical allies, though all three require careful steps in these unsettled times,” Joseph A. Kéchichian, Senior Fellow at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies (KFCRIS) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, told Vision Times.
Kéchichian is of the view that, after the 2020 clashes, New Delhi and Beijing are “now interested in a thaw and, if possible, a reset in relations.” He believes this is driven by serious economic needs, which demand an improvement in relations.
Kéchichian’s view is also reflected by Ian Hall, a Professor of International Relations and Acting Head of the School of Government and International Relations at Australia’s Griffith University, who said Chinese foreign policy places significant value on BRICS. China, India, Russia, and Brazil were the four founding members of BRICS in 2009, while South Africa joined a year later, giving the grouping its current name—an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
“Xi Jinping has little choice but to travel to New Delhi, given how much China values the BRICS,” Hall told Vision Times.
However, India and China, the world’s two most populous countries, with a history of disputed borders and a full-fledged war in 1962, have long faced major challenges despite continuous, steep growth in bilateral trade.
India has repeatedly made it clear in recent years, while negotiations were underway to resolve the border dispute, that broader relations with Beijing are conditional on “peace and tranquility” along the border and improvements in overall mutual understanding, said Dr. Pooran Chandra Pandey, a New Delhi-based public policy specialist and international relations expert whose career has spanned the United Nations, the Times of India Group, international think tanks, and academia.
“The first such visit by the Chinese premier since 2019 holds much geopolitical significance, given the circumstances the world is facing currently, including the Russia-Ukraine, Israel-US-Iran wars, supply chain insecurity, energy security issues, Strait of Hormuz supply disruptions, America’s tariff wars, new lows in trust deficits, cybersecurity issues, and the AI supremacy race between the US and China, among others,” Pandey told Vision Times.
400 accompanying Chinese officials
Xi’s visit to New Delhi for this weekend’s BRICS summit was confirmed by the Indian government only on Thursday. However its probability was first reported by Reuters which quoted three Indian sources, including one with “direct knowledge” of the matter about a delegation of 400 officials accompanying the Chinese leader.
“China attaches great importance to and actively participates in BRICS cooperation, and supports India, the current chair, in successfully hosting this year’s BRICS summit,” said the Chinese Foreign Ministry, according to the Reuters report.
Following the Galwan Valley clash, India introduced many market-access restrictions on Chinese companies, including banning commercial Chinese apps and amending procurement rules on July 23, 2020, to restrict bidders from nations “sharing a land border with India on grounds of defence of India” unless they registered with a designated authority. New Delhi described it as a “matter” linked to “India’s national security,” according to a statement by India’s Ministry of Finance.
As a result, Chinese companies could no longer participate freely in government tenders. Telecom companies such as Huawei and ZTE also faced restrictions and could not take part in India’s 5G rollout. Chinese engineers, technicians, and managers also faced tightened scrutiny for visas, particularly those working in sensitive sectors.
Xi’s visit this weekend, along with a delegation of 400 officials, “signals that Beijing would like more access to India’s market, which still remains restricted after the border clash in 2020,” according to Hall.
Kéchichian highlights the changing geopolitics since 2020 and said that India needs Chinese capital, while the latter requires greater access to its market.
This “partly explains the large business delegation accompanying the Chinese leader,” he said. “With serious upheavals in global economic affairs because of the Donald Trump administration’s tariff policies, Chinese companies have started to look at alternative markets, especially after ‘roundabout trade’ to Western countries (through Mexico or Vietnam, for example) has ended.”
Kéchichian said that, in this emerging geoeconomic context, China is now looking elsewhere, including towards India. This is becoming more significant because of the rapidly growing Indian economy, whose GDP is now “larger than leading economies like France, Brazil, Italy, and Russia,” forcing China to reassess its investments.
“Predictions that India might field the world’s third-largest economy by 2028 is a critical development that, if it materializes, will mean that China cannot overlook this vital market,” said Kéchichian.
According to Pandey, an accompanying delegation of 400 Chinese officials implies discussions over comprehensive issues and the creation of high-powered monitoring committees on both sides for implementation.
“By any standards, 400 Chinese delegation members accompanying [Xi] is not a small number. This number also means almost everything big and small will be covered during bilateral meetings between the two leaders,” Pandey said.
Direct flights between India and China were suspended in early 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, following the deterioration in bilateral ties after the Galwan Valley clash, direct connectivity was not resumed. It remained suspended for five years until the Modi-Xi meeting in Kazan in October 2024 and subsequent negotiations, with direct flights restarting in October 2025.
According to Pandey, airline connections between more cities and towns, increased trade, more Chinese investment, and potentially more Chinese consular services in India, and vice versa, could be some of the issues discussed by the large Chinese delegation.
Expanded BRICS
The originally five-member BRICS was expanded at the Johannesburg Summit in August 2023, where six additional nations — Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Indonesia — were invited to join.
In addition to the expanded 11-member BRICS, there is another category of 10 BRICS partner countries, including Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Uganda, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam.
Kéchichian, who has been following the expansion of BRICS from Riyadh, said that the bloc is growing at a steady pace, “largely” due to the economic policies of the US administration, which he described as “chaos” ushering in a new era in the “global system.”
“With nearly half of the world’s total population and more than a quarter of the global economy, there are significant economic expansions in all BRICS states, ranging the gamut from strategic energy controls to sustained rare earth production,” he said.
Kéchichian believes that, in today’s geopolitical context, developing economies are increasingly preferring multipolar accords that, inevitably, “might isolate traditional powers” that have taken their strengths for granted.
“Regrettably, media coverage of the BRICS Summit will be scant in Western sources, which is distressing given important decisions that will affect everyone’s life,” he said.
Pandey analyzes the growing BRICS as a non-Western bloc whose rise implies the emergence of Global South geopolitics. He said this will have greater geopolitical implications over the next decade.
“In addition to the Middle East and West, Africa is being touted as the next emerging continent and would need support and guidance from both China and India. Both nations, however, need to have a clear demarcation of understanding about this, as both India and China claim to be advocates of the Global South,” Pandey added.
Message for the US
Experts believe that Xi’s visit to India with a large official delegation, reportedly double the size of the delegation in 2019, sends a strong message to the United States, with which Beijing is constantly engaged in a geopolitical tug of war.
“Xi will definitely leverage this visit to demonstrate that he is as important to India as the US is and any delay or uncertainty from the US will cost it a heavy price and likely US influence in Asia,” said Pandey, who believes that US trade tariffs against India and China are “bringing the two together on a much larger bilateral platform.”
Pandey believes that Xi’s visit to India this weekend could “potentially” fast-track the final trade agreement between New Delhi and Washington, which began negotiations on the deal in early 2025 after Modi’s visit to Washington.
“The US perhaps had been waiting for the BRICS summit and its outcomes before signing a US trade deal with India, as much as before Trump meeting with Xi,” said Pandey.
Hall said that President Donald Trump may comment on Xi’s visit to India on social media, but he does not think that the BRICS summit will make “much difference to the endless haggling over the US-India trade deal.”
“I suspect New Delhi is now waiting to see if the midterms produce a different political mood in Washington that would be more advantageous to India,” he said.
Kéchichian views the situation differently from Pandey and Hall, but he also thinks that Xi’s visit to India will have an impact on the U.S.-India trade deal. He emphasizes that time is short for both sides to make sound decisions.
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