Xi Jinping to Join India BRICS Summit With 400 Officials
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- Xi Jinping is expected to attend the Sept 12-13 BRICS summit in New Delhi — his first India visit in seven years — with a delegation of roughly 400 officials, more than double the fewer than 200 who accompanied him in 2019, according to three Indian sources with direct knowledge
- The visit follows warming ties after 2020 border clashes killed 20 Indian and 4 Chinese soldiers, shattering decades of relative peace along the 3,800km disputed Himalayan frontier and triggering a four-year military standoff resolved by an October 2024 disengagement pact
- A late-July face-off between Indian and Chinese army patrols near a remote border area reignited diplomatic tensions, prompting National Security Adviser Ajit Doval to travel to Beijing on Aug 24 for talks with Foreign Minister Wang Yi
- Trump-era trade policies have created a rare area of US-China-India convergence, with Xi's attendance signaling that neither Beijing nor New Delhi wants external pressure to undermine BRICS, per Reuters
- Xi's final travel plans and any bilateral agreements remain undecided, and China's foreign ministry said it has "no information available" about the visit; he also skipped the 2025 BRICS summit in Brazil
- Indian and Chinese officials plan to use the summit to expand engagement while managing longstanding border and regional security differences, the sources said
Why it matters: Xi's first India visit in seven years, with a 400-official delegation roughly double his 2019 entourage, shows Beijing and New Delhi are prioritizing stabilization of their 3,800km disputed border after 2020 clashes that killed 24 soldiers, particularly as both face common pressure from Trump's trade policies. His return also reverses his absence from Brazil's 2025 BRICS summit.
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