Two Giants, One Border: Why China and India Must Rethink Their Relationship

On August 31, 2025, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made his first official visit to China in seven years for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit. This meeting was highly significant for both Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping, whose countries have much in common. Both are economic, political, and cultural powerhouses in Asia and globally, with nuclear capabilities and rapidly rising influence. And while relations between the two seemed warm at the SCO summit, in part because of recent US trade maneuvers nudging them closer, beneath the smiles lurk border disputes, economic competition, and strategic mistrust that neither nation can ignore.

How Beijing and New Delhi Became Rivals

Since the Chinese Communist Party took power in 1949, Beijing has tended to see India through the lens of its ties with the Soviet Union (now Russia) and the United States, rather than on India's own terms. This unwillingness to recognize India as an equal has long fueled