Can China’s Xi and India’s Modi reset rocky ties after border detente?

The two sides have revealed little about their deal. But there’s plenty at stake, from investments to TikTok.

New Delhi, India — For those who make a living studying body language, there was plenty to read during the BRICS summit this week in Kazan, Russia.

There were the images of Russian President Vladimir Putin, far from isolated on the global stage despite his war on Ukraine, standing next to leaders from 36 countries, nearly two dozen of them presidents or premiers. There was the shot of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, fresh from meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskky in recent weeks, hugging Putin for the second time in three months.

But to many analysts, the most significant photo was one where Putin sat, flanked by the leaders of the world’s most populous nations, Chinese President Xi Jinping and India’s Modi. For Putin, as host of the BRICS summit, had provided the setting for a detente that had seemed unlikely just weeks earlier.

Modi and Xi met on the sidelines of the summit, their first full-fledged bilateral dialogue in five years, in an attempt to reset a long troubled relationship that had fallen off the cliff after a bloody clash along their contested border in Ladakh in 2020. At least 20 Indian soldiers and four of their Chinese counterparts died in heated hand-to-hand combat with rocks, clubs and staves, parts of which were captured on smartphone video and shared around the world, shaping public opinion in both nations.

The Modi-Xi meeting came two days after Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri announced that the two sides had come to an agreement for their troops to disengage from locations along their disputed frontier where they had been locked in standoffs since 2020. The deal allows the two armies to restart patrolling their sides of the border according to an agreed schedule.