National security advisor Ajit Doval’s visit to Beijing to hold ‘boundary talks’ with Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi is diplomatic groundwork ahead of the upcoming BRICS summit in Delhi on 12-13 September. The summit will be a damp squib without President Xi Jinping and India doesn’t yet have a confirmation that he will attend.

Six years after China made coordinated incursions into Indian territory to reshape dynamics along the disputed Himalayan border, India has been trying to normalise relations while skirting the border issue, which makes a sorry international spectacle and exposes the failure of the Modi government’s China policy.

While the brag at home has been about Modi’s muscular leadership, India has been remarkably timid vis-à-vis China. After the Galwan clash in 2020 — during which China made new incursions in Galwan Valley, Pangong Tso and Gogra–Hot Springs in eastern Ladakh — Modi declared that nobody had entered Indian territory. The denial, a barefaced lie, weakened India’s case and gave Beijing political and diplomatic cover for its hostile action. China continues to pressure the frontier.

The rhetoric of self-reliance also stands exposed. India depends heavily on Chinese machinery, electronics and industrial inputs. The bilateral trade deficit was $112.16 billion in FY2025-26, and it is widening ($67.1 billion in the first half of calendar 2026.

India’s Operation Sindoor strikes in Pakistan in May 2025, after the Pahalgam terror attack on 22 April, revealed an even more dangerous reality — the operational character of the China–Pakistan partnership. Pakistan used Chinese aircraft, missiles and air defence systems. India’s deputy Army chief later said China had provided Pakistan with live inputs on important Indian........

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