Introduction
Over the last eight decades, the relationship between India and China has seen many ups and downs, ranging from times of close friendship to frozen relations and violent conflicts (Pereira, 2026). The 1950s era of cultural warmth between the two neighbors ended with the border war of 1962. What still remains of this war today is the Line of Actual Control (LAC) that marks the border between Chinese and Indian controlled areas. Since the LAC never transformed into a bilaterally respected fixed border (Pereira, 2026), it triggered the 2020 border clash in the Galwan Valley, India’s Ladakh region (BBC, 2021). The violent confrontation, carried out through hand-to-hand combat between soldiers, resulted in the deaths of 20 soldiers on the Indian side and four on the Chinese side. After four years of this frozen state, bilateral relations have thawed after an October 2024 border agreement (Balázs, 2024). But to what extent can ties between the two most populated nations be strengthened and sustained?
Shared Paths in a Changing Global Order
Even though India and China are competitors in Asia and beyond, there are multiple aspects bringing them together. The most dominant common goal between them is the aim to shape a more multipolar world order, and especially, to be international advocates for the Global South (Fong, 2025). While this naturally makes them fierce rivals for the role of the Global South’s leader, institutionally, this competition is also balanced by cooperation in organisations such as BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and the Russia-India-China (RIC) trilateral (Hall, 2025). While simultaneously working to mitigate each others’ growth of influence, India and China cooperate in the context of BRICS’s aim to reform global financial systems (Ficher, 2026). In order to achieve this, they aim to strengthen the Global South’s representation in financial institutions and seek alternative payment systems challenging Western-dominated SWIFT.
Additionally, both India and China were targeted by Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which some experts suppose added to the mutual rapprochement (Fong, 2025). This claim can be supported, since the rapprochement policies were primarily trade and investment focused. The policies included a restoration of traditional border trade, resumption of direct flights and the reciprocal lifting of sector specific trade and investment restrictions (Bajpaee, 2026). Congruently, India especially saw its foreign policy doctrine of non-alignment confirmed by this, as the country realised that even long-built strategic partnerships with Western powers can potentially lose their meaning and effect overnight (Fong, 2025).
Geostrategic Caution in New Delhi
Nonetheless, the strategic rivalry between India and China rooted in their shared history as well as each country’s current partners of choice in the region, provides reasons to doubt the sustainability of the recent rapprochement. India, for its part, views China’s “String of Pearls” strategy with suspicion (Templeton, 2025). First identified in 2004, this chain of Chinese commercial ports in the Indian Ocean Region, especially in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Pakistan, could be utilized as naval bases. Since almost all of India’s trade volume and more than two-thirds of its trade value transits the Indian Ocean Region, the ports’ dual-use capabilities are posing security and economic hazards to New Delhi (Templeton, 2025).
In addition, China’s relations with Bangladesh and Pakistan are two other major factors adding to skepticism in New Delhi. Regarding Pakistan, New Delhi opposes the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which is a part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) (Park, 2017). Because the CPEC leads through the highly contested territory of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, New Delhi unsuccessfully proposed renaming the corridor, fearing the new name might internationally label the territory as Pakistani and therefore weaken India’s claim on it (Park, 2017). Furthermore, Pakistan might soon buy Chinese 5th-Generation J-35 fighter jets, which would give the country an edge over India (Yang, 2026). When it comes to their eastern neighbor Bangladesh, policy makers in New Delhi are getting increasingly concerned about India’s “Chicken Neck”, the Siliguri Corridor in West Bengal (Sanyal, 2026). The corridor, which measures a width of 22 kilometres at its most narrow point, connects Northeast India to the rest of the country and borders China to its north and Bangladesh to its south. Experts warn China’s supportive engagement in Bangladesh’s Teesta river project, located in the vicinity of the corridor, could one day translate into a broader national security issue for New Delhi (Sanyal, 2026).
Historical Resentments in Beijing
Regarding the Chinese perspective on the bilateral relations, disruptive factors are not as much of a geopolitical nature as they are for India. China does not view India as an equal on the international stage, but rather as a potentially disturbing regional actor with nuclear capabilities (Aiyar, 2026). For Pallavi Aiyar (2026), a China-correspondent of Indian descent, the greatest obstacle to a lasting friendship between India and China is both sides’ view of their counterpart through a “partial historical memory.” In Chinese collective memory, Indians are still regarded as the once intermediaries of British colonial trade in China (especially the opium trade) and as the colonialists’ right hand in general (Aiyar, 2026).
Adding to this, although both countries initiated the resumption of the Kailash Manasarovar pilgrimage in 2025, according to Chinese officials, discord regarding Tibet still poses another major obstacle hindering long-term healthy relations (Fong, 2025). China’s doctrine of non-interference into its domestic matters collides with Indian officials supporting the Dalai Lama’s resolute opposition to Chinese involvement in his succession. While former Indian government officials allege China to harbour historical resentments (Ravi, 2022), Chinese state-owned media claims India is pursuing regional hegemony in South Asia and the Indian Ocean Region (Lin, 2024). Lin Minwang, professor at Fudan University, argues that pursuing ownership of a whole region and trying to keep out peripheral actors, as he claims India does, would simply not be a sustainable foreign policy strategy against a global powerhouse like China.
Discussion
Viewed optimistically, India’s and China’s paths cross and even align in several areas, influenced by a reshaping global geopolitical landscape. They align when it comes to pushing for a more multipolar global order and stronger representation of the Global South in financial institutions. Nonetheless, their actual cooperation in institutions pursuing these aims, such as BRICS, remains limited.
This is observable in several domains. For one, India tends to act reserved regarding any BRICS financial initiatives that could potentially give China an advantage, slowing down the goal of producing alternative financial institutions (Ficher, 2026). China, on the other hand, relies on leveraging diplomatic tensions visible in Xi Jinping delaying a public decision whether to attend the 2026 BRICS summit hosted by India (Grossman, 2026).
The Chinese accusation that India is still a tool to the West is unlikely to fade given India’s balancing act against China through its now even more engaged cooperation with QUAD (Aiyar, 2026), as well as its new Security and Defence Partnership (SDP) with the EU (Bamberger, 2026). Experts therefore predict that Xi’s attendance at the upcoming summit would not put an end to the rivalry. Instead, his participation would reinforce Beijing’s demand for India to make substantial concessions and to create clarity about its US-ties (Grossman, 2026). These Chinese strategic demands are unlikely to resonate well with the Indian national security establishment, which will remain alert about the possibility of China’ s engagement with Pakistan and Bangladesh creating a potential three-front encirclement (Petermann, 2026).
Given these circumstances, India does not seem keen on restoring its relationship to China as it was before the Galwan clash. Its diplomatic engagements suggest it is actively building a strategy to manage a permanent rivalry with China (Gosh, 2026). This view is also shared by Chetigj Bajpaee (2026), who analyses the rapprochement to be tactical, rather than strategic.
Conclusions
The historically ambivalent relations between India and China have experienced a rapprochement following a border agreement in late 2024. Evidence found for this article, which set out to discuss the strength and sustainability of the rapprochement, provides more reasons for pessimism than optimism. On the one hand, India and China share the aim of establishing a more multipolar global order. In order to provide alternative financial institutions, they cooperate in organisations such as BRICS. On the other hand, any cooperation between them is shadowed by their shared colonial history and geopolitical interests in Asia. China’s aim of detaching India from diplomatic, security and military industrial cooperation with the West is improbable, given India’s new partnership with the EU. For New Delhi, China will remain a potential adversary that is encircling it by establishing close ties with India’s neighbors. Besides the fierce geostrategic rivalry, the border question remains practically unresolved with the 2024 agreement limited to a consensus on patrolling practices. Economic rapprochement and diplomatic engagement such as Xi calling both countries friends (Master, 2026), is going to remain wobbly and exclusively rhetorical unless both countries find a way to solve the border issue permanently. Otherwise, the LAC will remain a highly volatile topic, with the potential of ending any diplomatic progress in an instant.
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