The first visit by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to China since 2019 will take place in Tianjin, China, from August 31 to September 1, to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit. According to India Today, this is a high-stakes diplomatic gamble, as it marks the first sign that India is prioritizing regional cooperation, despite an uptick in tensions along the borders and underlying geopolitical concerns.
Why This Visit Matters: Diplomatic Timing and Global Optics
This visit of PM Modi is being done at a time when the United States is poised to increase its scrutiny, perhaps most particularly following the statements of President Donald Trump about the BRICS countries buying oil from Russia and “threatening the hegemony of the U.S. dollar.” It is against this backdrop that the attendance of India at the SCO Summit acquires a new context – one of projecting strategic independence coupled with juggling both the Eastern and Western camps.
It is also the first personal visit by Modi in China since the informal summit between the two leaders in Wuhan in 2019, which further gives significance to the optics of people-to-people diplomacy, especially now when relations between India and China have been strained due to border issues.
How It May Impact the US-India Trade Deal
India’s greater engagement with both China and Russia is taking place at a critical time when India is negotiating key trade contracts with the United States. The PM Modi China visit, together with Doval going to Moscow, may be perceived by Washington as going against Indo-US alignment.
President Trump’s aggressive rhetoric against BRICS, in which he described it as a threat to the Western monopoly on economic power, is bound to sour work on trade agreements, especially when India is allegedly strengthening its ties with groups that pose a threat to the US agenda. It can be expected that India will place this outreach in economic pragmatic terms rather than ideological convergence.
Ajit Doval in Moscow: Parallel Diplomatic Channel Strengthening Indo-Russian Ties
Even as Modi visits China, India’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval will be in Moscow to hold high-level bilateral talks. His plan comprises the defence partnership, anti-terrorism, and cyber-security systems, and thus India wants to ensure that it has a great partnership relationship in terms of security with Russia, despite its unsettled balance with Western partners.
The fact that Doval is in Moscow supports the Modi outreach to China, indicating that India pursues a multi-vector foreign policy, i.e., India is not too friendly with one bloc and too hostile to another, as is the case with the US, Europe, China, and Russia.
