New Delhi: With Washington’s tariff hammer falling onerous and regional diplomacy coming into a turbulent stretch, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is heading to China for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit. It’s going to mark his first go to to the nation because the lethal 2020 Galwan Valley conflict.
Scheduled for August 31 to September 1 within the northern port metropolis of Tianjin, the go to comes at a fragile second. Not solely is India navigating fallout from stiff new commerce duties imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump, however it’s also dealing with scrutiny over its oil imports from Russia.
Modi’s presence on the SCO summit is being seen by many as an try to recalibrate India’s strategic posture, particularly as tensions with the West rise and ties with Beijing present indicators of cautious restore.
That is the prime minister’s first journey to China in 5 years. Whereas he final set foot on Chinese language soil in 2019, he did meet President Xi Jinping briefly in the course of the BRICS summit held in Kazan in October 2024. That interplay helped ease the freeze in high-level dialogue and set the stage for ongoing border talks. It additionally helped the reopening of the Kailash-Mansarovar Yatra, a symbolic step towards thawing relations.
However belief stays fragile.
India’s determination to attend the SCO summit additionally comes simply weeks after Defence Minister Rajnath Singh refused to signal a joint assertion at a key SCO defence meet. The explanation was omission of any point out of the April 22 terror assault in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam, which left 26 lifeless, within the assertion. As a substitute, the ultimate doc inserted a reference to Balochistan that was extensively seen as a transfer pushed by Pakistan to color India as a regional destabiliser.
The omission didn’t go unnoticed in New Delhi. In response to Indian officers, the doc appeared tilted, with no acknowledgment of the human price of the Pahalgam killings.
Nevertheless, in a shock transfer the next month, China issued a strongly worded assertion condemning the assault. It got here after america formally designated The Resistance Entrance, a Lashkar-e-Taiba offshoot, as a international terrorist organisation. Beijing’s response mirrored a shift in tone, even when not in alignment.
“China firmly opposes all types of terrorism and strongly condemns the terrorist assault that occurred on April 22… China calls on regional nations to boost counterterrorism cooperation and collectively preserve regional safety and stability,” mentioned International Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian in an announcement that caught diplomatic watchers off guard.
Towards this backdrop, PM Modi’s China go to might carry extra weight than simply optics.
Talks on the SCO will embrace 10 member nations: India, China, Russia, Pakistan, Iran, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The agenda contains counterterrorism, regional safety and commerce.
With america mountain climbing tariff strain, there may be rising hypothesis that New Delhi could also be rebalancing (much less reliant on the West and extra open to multilateral blocs with Beijing and Moscow within the room).
There’s additionally the chance of facet conferences between Modi, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese language President Xi Jinping, including geopolitical heft to the summit.
Based in 2001, the SCO has advanced from a regional safety bloc to a broader platform for financial and strategic cooperation. However this 12 months’s gathering comes with uncommon undertones: a terror assault nonetheless unresolved, commerce wars intensifying and main powers reshuffling their alliances.
For India, greater than being a summit, the SCO is a take a look at of how far it may possibly stretch its strategic house between a China that shares a tense border, a Russia that provides its oil and a United States that’s tightening the screws on each.