China’s Xi Jinping likely to attend BRICS summit in Delhi next month, first India visit in 7 years

Xi’s attendance at the BRICS summit, the most anticipated visit, will add to efforts by New Delhi and Beijing to restore ties that plummeted after the start of the border standoff in 2020.

He last visited India in October 2019 when he travelled to Mamallapuram near Chennai for the second informal bilateral summit of leaders.

In October 2024, Xi and Prime Minister Narendra Modi met on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in the Russian city of Kazan to start the process of restoration of ties. The disengagement of troops in eastern Ladakh was completed next month.

More than 50,000 troops are still deployed on either side of the LAC in the region and the process of de-escalation and de-induction of troops has not yet taken place.

But in the two years since, the two sides have made significant progress in stabilising relations with direct flights, resumption of visas, easing of curbs on Chinese firms and the revival of the pilgrimage to Kailash Mansarovar.

Sources said the September summit will mark two years of the rapprochement between the two sides, and India is keen to host all BRICS leaders. Barring any unforeseen development, participation at the highest level has been conveyed to New Delhi.

The venue has not yet been announced, but the Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi is likely to be the preferred choice, sources said.

The Prime Minister’s Office has conveyed to the participating countries of BRICS that there will be no bilateral visits along with the summit, but there will be bilateral meetings with the visiting leaders.

Xi comes at a time when some challenges have emerged on the bilateral front – on the issue of visas for Indian business persons travelling to China, and reports of tension along the LAC in Arunachal Pradesh.

Last Saturday, speaking on the situation with China, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said, “I think we went through a particularly bad patch between the summer of 2020 and the autumn of 2024, and that was primarily an outcome of the situation in the border areas… At the end of the day, peace and tranquility in the border areas is a prerequisite for good relations, and the state of the border, to a very large measure, naturally would determine the state of the relations.”

“Having said that, I think naturally, if assuming things are stable and the needle is more cooperative, obviously, I mean we are both very big economies. In many ways, we are markets to each other. We are part of the supply chain. They industrialised much faster and much bigger and much earlier, largely because of many of the policies we advocate,” he said.

“The world is competitive. We must build up our strengths. We have to do business with the entire world. That includes China too, but it is important we deal with them confidently. We stand our ground, as we have stood on the border. We develop our strengths, which unfortunately from the 1960s, for half a century, we did not do. We have to make up for the shortcomings and the mistakes of the past, and that is really what we are hoping to do. So I think a stronger, more self-reliant India, a more industrialised India, a more manufacturing India will be able to actually compete with China as it will with other major countries of the world,” Jaishankar said.

He said the government had taken up with China the problem of business visas being faced by Indian applicants.

Sources said that the meeting of BRICS Foreign Ministers in New Delhi in May had discussed the agenda for the leaders’ summit, and there was agreement on a range of issues for discussion.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi could not attend since he had to be present in Beijing for the high-stakes meeting between Xi and US President Donald Trump. Chinese ambassador Xu Feihong attended the BRICS meeting on Wang’s behalf. In June, Wang visited India for the meeting of the BRICS NSAs.