Many weeks before the 2025 BRICS summit in Brazil, the Chinese government officially announced that President Xi Jinping will not attend. Now, ahead of its 18th edition in New Delhi (September 12-13), The Indian Express reported that Xi was likely to attend with a large delegation in what would be his first visit to India in seven years. An official confirmation of attendance is still awaited.
However, with India announcing the standardisation of 27 names in Arunachal Pradesh earlier this month, the strong reactions from a section of China’s strategic affairs community may indicate a surprise decision. In the past, India has categorically rejected China’s actions of renaming places in Arunachal Pradesh to make territorial claims.
Liu Zongyi, a senior fellow at the Shanghai Institute for International Studies (SIIS), considered China’s leading expert on the border dispute with India, described this as evidence that New Delhi’s position remained entrenched despite recent efforts to improve bilateral relations.
A strongly worded edit in China Daily on August 11, a Chinese Communist Party-controlled newspaper, similarly stated: “The history of the China-India boundary itself calls for caution rather than political posturing.” And, a widely read foreign affairs blogger wrote, “By attacking China on the eve of the upcoming BRICS meet, does Modi think by acting first, he has the upper hand?”
These reactions must be read in the wider context of the bilateral relationship over the last few years to understand how China might be weighing its decision, and what signals it is sending now.
Context for Xi’s past absence
Most recently, Xi skipped the 2025 BRICS summit in Rio de Janeiro and the G20 summit in New Delhi in 2023.
While some practical reasons were initially attributed to the BRICS move, such as scheduling conflicts and Xi’s several meetings with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, another group of analysts saw an India angle. Bloomberg suggested that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s status as the guest of honour during his state visit to Brazil around the same period could have influenced Xi’s decision.
“While Sino-Indian relations have warmed somewhat in recent months, it could be embarrassing for Xi Jinping, the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao, if he is overshadowed by another world leader,” Bloomberg reported.
In 2023, the last-minute Chinese announcement of Xi’s absence at the G20 summit in New Delhi was interpreted by some global media outlets as “a blow” to India. This was a highly unusual move then, as Xi had never missed a G20 summit since taking office in 2012. It was also attributed to the state of ties at that point, which had deteriorated since the 2020 Line of Actual Control (LAC) standoff.
A crucial factor that might have contributed to the decision was Beijing announcing a fresh list of Chinese names for places on the Indian side of the LAC days before the event. In protest, India launched large-scale military exercises along its border with China.
Strategy behind ambiguity?
Xi hasn’t visited India since the friendly “Chennai connect” summit in 2019, which was held a year before the LAC clashes. It was only in 2024 that the two leaders met in on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit in Kazan, Russia.
A reset of sorts has been unfolding in the bilateral relationship since Modi’s unexpected yet friendly gesture of attending the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) leaders’ meet in Tianjin in August last year and meeting Xi.
But diplomatically speaking, can Xi or China afford a “no show” at the BRICS summit for two years in a row? First, it should be noted that Modi had delivered the invitation to Xi a year ago in Tianjin. More recently, the Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri was in Beijing to discuss arrangements for the BRICS summit.
So why is a confirmation yet to come? Some experts have argued that the suspense and drama surrounding Xi’s decision may be tactical.
“Perhaps Beijing wants to see New Delhi move in a favourable direction on a range of issues, including a further relaxation of Indian restrictions on Chinese investment and business, visas and direct connectivity, and Tibetan and Taiwan issues,” Derek Grossman, writing for China Global South Project, observed last week. Xi also wants assurances that New Delhi isn’t using normalisation with China merely tactically while deepening military alignment with Washington, Grossman added.
On the other hand, some others have argued that despite Xi making BRICS a centrepiece of his push to reshape the global balance of power, a miss is also possible in the service of sending a larger message. What emerges after reading between the lines in Chinese commentary is this: even at a time of easing of relations, India’s Arunachal move is being read as a part of political posturing.
Either way, whether or not a Xi Jinping “no show” will happen, what is certain is that questions will be asked if BRICS countries or the extended grouping BRICS+ can manage disagreements between its two largest members, who also happen to be neighbours. As of now, it is up to Beijing, more than New Delhi, to determine the next level of their bilateral relationship.
Hemant Adlakha, formerly a professor of Chinese at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, is Vice Chairperson and an Honorary Fellow, Institute of Chinese Studies (ICS), Delhi.
So why is a confirmation yet to come? Some experts have argued that the suspense and drama surrounding Xi’s decision may be tactical. (Photo: AP)
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