Institute of South Asian Studies
The first visit by India’s External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar to China after five years signals continued steady improvement in China-India relations after a cautious beginning in October 2024, as Jaishankar himself recognised, and is gaining momentum beyond a mere thaw.
Jaishankar was in China for the foreign ministers’ meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). Significantly, Beijing received him with particular care and organised bilateral meetings not only with his counterpart, Wang Yi, but also with Vice President Han Zheng. The visit, one of several in less than two months, indicates that recent tensions over Beijing’s support for Pakistan in its May 2025 conflict with India and over the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation have not derailed the process of thawing relations.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s likely visit to China for a SCO leaders’ summit in August 2025 will be the high point of this process. It will indicate that the initial work of restoring basic normalcy in China-India relations has been completed and the border has sufficiently stabilised. Of course, then the hard work of making substantive progress in relations and de-escalating the border dispute will begin.
Beyond symbolising the thaw in Sino-Indian relations, Jaishankar’s visit demonstrates a paradox. China and India have greater interest and space to cooperate more amid a fast-shifting global environment, but are constantly hampered by contentious bilateral issues.
On one hand, the visit and the thaw behind it have opened space for more global cooperation between New Delhi and Beijing. During his meetings in China, Jaishankar spoke about the “very complex” international situation, while in his official address, he described growing “economic instability” in the world and urged the SCO to “stabilise the global order” and “address longstanding challenges that threaten [their] collective interests”. He also highlighted the rise of multipolarity, which officially both China and India pursue, and the SCO’s key role in advancing it. In short, Jaishankar underscored the need for the two Asian giants to cooperate on a global level in response to the growing global instability.
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