New Delhi: The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit is witnessing diplomacy’s version of Instagrammable moments—Prime Minister Narendra Modi seated in a car with Vladimir Putin, and Narendra Modi flanked by his Russian counterpart and Chinese Premier Xi Jinping, among others. This otherwise unlikely trio, brought together by Donald Trump’s upturn of geopolitics, has made the summit increasingly crucial.
On the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), Chinese Premier Xi Jinping appeared to give Prime Minister Modi his word. “China and India are cooperation partners, not rivals…. each other’s development opportunities rather than threats,” state media Xinhua quoted Xi as saying.
This year’s SCO meeting is “a show of regional solidarity”, report Joe Leahy, Andres Schipani, and Chris Kay in the Financial Times.
“China is also aiming to portray itself as a more dependable partner for developing countries than the Trump administration, whose trade measures have hit allies and adversaries in the region alike,” they report. “The push has gained momentum in recent months, especially after Trump alienated Modi’s government—which until then had been moving closer to the US—by slapping tariffs of up to 50 per cent on Indian exports.”
Through over a dozen interviews, The New York Times’ Mujib Mashal, Tyler Pager, and Anupreeta Das piece together the deterioration of the Modi-Trump equation—which has far-reaching consequences for both nations—in their report. The duo, they report, has not spoken since a phone call on 17 June around the time of the G7 summit in Canada.
“Mr. Modi declined an invitation from Mr. Trump to stop by Washington before he flew home [from the G7]. His officials were scandalised that Mr. Trump might try to force their leader into a handshake with Pakistan’s army chief, who had also been invited to the White House for lunch around the same time. It was another clear sign, a senior Indian official said, that Mr. Trump cared little for the complexity of their issue or the sensitivities and history around it,” the report says. Since then, the Indian side has been “wary” of putting Modi on the phone with Trump.
It took Donald Trump a single summer to undo three decades of diplomacy. No nation is “entirely safe from Trump’s unstable temperament”, and the US President now finds himself in the unique position of having unified the entire spectrum of “permanently clashing political parties”, writes author Kapil Komireddi in an opinion piece for the New York Times.
India had, so far, been lulled into the delusion of having unique protections due to the supposed special bond between Mr. Trump and Mr. Modi—“two self-aggrandising men who have subordinated their nations’ foreign relations to their personalities,”—Komireddi writes.
“When Mr. Trump was elected in November [2024], pro-Modi Indian media personalities exploded with a mawkish mixture of triumphalism and schadenfreude. They declared that with Mr. Modi’s friend back in the White House, India’s adversaries were on notice and rhapsodised about the chemistry between the two men.”
Prime Minister Modi’s first visit to China came after seven years, indicating how much US President Trump has, of late, altered the geopolitical landscape, reports Alex Travelli and Hari Kumar in The New York Times. India’s efforts to present itself as a manufacturing and business alternative to China, that is, the China+1 strategy, have now been “left in tatters”.
“The China Plus One approach has been critical to India’s budding ambitions to become a factory powerhouse. Manufacturing growth, especially in high-end sectors like technology, was seen by India as addressing chronic problems, like the underemployment of its vast population of young workers. Now pursuing that path, without the support of Washington, and in potentially closer coordination with China, promises to be even more difficult,” the report concludes.
Xi Jinping played host to a “favourable moment”. He managed to bring together the leaders of two countries—Modi, who has been “pushed away by President Trump’s tariffs”, and Putin, who has been “brought out of isolation by his embrace”, report David Pierson, Mujib Mashal, and Nataliya Vasilyeva in the New York Times.
“At the center is Mr. Xi, turning America’s alienation of India into an opportunity, and finding validation for his own long alignment with Mr. Putin,” the report states. “It shows how Mr. Xi is trying to turn history, diplomacy, and military might into tools for reshaping a global order that has [so far] been dominated by the United States.”
The Economist weighs in on the significance of Modi’s visit to China and what it revealed about the maze-like state of geopolitics now. For the last 25 years, India’s diplomatic efforts have been directed towards the West.
“We cannot just blindly be going along with someone who does not know what he is going to say tomorrow,” the report quotes former US ambassador Navtej Sarna as saying.
“We can make a virtue of being non-aligned now,” he adds. “India had already been trying to open up new markets. Since 2021, it has signed off on half a dozen trade deals, including one with the United Kingdom. It soon hopes to ink one with the EU. For weaponry, it could depend more on France or Israel, which together already supply around 46% of its arms. On August 22, India announced that a French firm will help it produce engines for homegrown fighter jets,” notes The Economist.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)