India, China Both Need BRICS Summit to Succeed — SkimNews
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- Ajit Doval travelled to Beijing for the 25th round of Special Representatives talks with Wang Yi, the final such meeting before India hosts the BRICS Summit on September 12 in New Delhi.
- Xi Jinping's attendance is increasingly expected and would mark his first visit to India in seven years; uncertainty over whether he will appear gives Beijing leverage to keep Delhi accommodating.
- India has invested heavily in summit success as a test of its BRICS presidency, while China assumes the chair next year and would forfeit needed goodwill by skipping a summit with no immediate border flare-ups.
- Both sides quietly rewrote a single sovereignty-adjacent sentence in the joint SR document — India published "Kailash-Manasarovar Yatra" in "Tibet" while China published "Mount Gang Renpoche and Lake Mapam Yun Tso" in "Xizang," exposing a framing fight neither will concede.
- Reports of Chinese military activity in Arunachal Pradesh's Taksing and Limeking sectors of Upper Subansiri district resurfaced in August, with the article arguing Beijing times such pressure for moments when Delhi has the most to lose from friction.
- Parallel cooperative moves — expedited business visas, the reopened Kailash Manasarovar Yatra, and reinstated direct flights — are unfolding alongside the talks, though the article cautions these should not be assumed to be causally linked.
Why it matters: For India, a smooth September 12 summit validates its BRICS presidency and Global South leadership pitch; for China, attending banks the goodwill it will need when it assumes the BRICS chair in 2027. The Lowy analysis argues Beijing has learned to weaponize uncertainty over Xi's presence — alongside renewed military pressure in Arunachal Pradesh — to keep Delhi absorbing irritants rather than letting them derail the optics, meaning institutional cooperation is real but capped well short of a genuine reset.
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