Xi Jinping Confirms India Visit For BRICS Summit, First Trip In Nearly Seven Years

Chinese President Xi Jinping will travel to New Delhi to attend the 18th BRICS Summit on September 12 and 13, China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed on Thursday, ending weeks of speculation over whether he would make the trip. The visit marks Xi's first to India in nearly seven years, and it comes at a delicate moment as both countries work to stabilise a relationship strained by a deadly 2020 border clash in Ladakh.

Xi last visited India in 2019 for an informal summit with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Mamallapuram, near Chennai. Before that, he attended the BRICS summit in Goa in 2016, and made his first trip to India as president in September 2014. Officials say Xi is expected to arrive with a delegation of roughly 400 officials, more than double the size of the group that accompanied him in 2019, underscoring the scale of engagement both sides are preparing for.

A First Bilateral In Six Years

The centrepiece of the visit, from an Indian perspective, is likely to be a bilateral meeting between Modi and Xi on the sidelines of the summit, their first such one-on-one engagement in roughly six years. Diplomats from both countries have used recent months to lay the groundwork for smoother ties, including a visit by India's National Security Adviser, Ajit Doval, to Beijing in late August at the invitation of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. That trip touched on the resumption of people-to-people exchanges, including the Kailash Manasarovar Yatra pilgrimage and trade through designated border posts.

Relations between the two Asian giants have remained tense since a deadly clash between Indian and Chinese troops in the Galwan Valley in 2020, which froze high-level political contact for years and hardened both governments' postures along their roughly 3,800-kilometre shared border. Modi's visit to China last year, his first in seven years, was widely seen as an early step toward thawing the relationship, and Xi's trip to Delhi this weekend is being read as a reciprocal signal.

What's On The Agenda

With India chairing BRICS this year, New Delhi has used its position to push an agenda focused on development cooperation, trade facilitation and financial architecture reform, alongside sensitive discussions on regional security and the unresolved border dispute. Xi's presence alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin and other BRICS leaders is expected to give added weight to discussions on reducing the bloc's reliance on Western-dominated financial infrastructure, even as India has signalled caution about any move that positions BRICS as explicitly anti-Western.

Delhi On High Alert

The scale of the summit has triggered extensive preparations across the capital, including airspace restrictions, traffic diversions and a citywide beautification push ahead of the arrival of multiple heads of state. Authorities have also announced that the Supreme Court will remain closed on September 11 to accommodate security arrangements tied to the summit.

For India, hosting Xi successfully alongside other global leaders will be seen as a test of its diplomatic balancing act: managing a complicated relationship with China even as it continues to build closer ties with Western partners and navigate a volatile global environment shaped by conflicts in the Middle East and Eastern Europe.

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