READING INDIA'S CHINA-CALCULUS POST-SCO

India’s SCO Week: Symbolism and Substance

The 25th SCO Summit in Tianjin was a masterclass in highly choreographed multipolar diplomacy. For Beijing, the event was hailed one of China’s most important “home-court” diplomatic showcases of the year, projecting China’s convening power at a time when Washington’s tariffs undo global economic partnerships. The SCO Summit was also followed by China’s “Victory Day” military parade, further emphasising the timing of the Summit and flexing China’s growing military strength. For New Delhi, Prime Minister Modi’s first visit to China since the Galwan clashes of 2020 was symbolic, performative, and declarative. It underscored India’s readiness to engage in Eurasian multilateralism on its own terms, participating in a forum equally shaped by China and Russia, without compromising on its red lines over terrorism and sovereignty. At the same time, it conveyed a to Washington that India’s practice of strategic autonomy should “not be seen through a third country lens”.

Modi’s keynote remarks at the summit cleverly recast SCO’s abbreviation to foreground India’s priorities: Security, Connectivity, and Opportunity. This pointed framing projected India’s strategic agenda onto the multilateral forum, highlighting that the future of the SCO depends on ensuring regional security, pursuing trusted connectivity rooted in sovereignty, and creating genuine opportunities for cooperation and reform. On security, he underscored terrorism as a universal menace and demanded consistent condemnation across all incidents. This demand was vindicated by the Tianjin Declaration’s explicit mention of the Pahalgam terror attack, marking a diplomatic breakthrough overcoming Beijing’s entrenched reluctance to name Pakistan or Pakistan-based terror groups.

On connectivity, Modi’s emphasis on sovereignty echoed India’s long-standing opposition to the Belt and Road Initiative’s (BRI) passage through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). This stance gained sharper resonance in light of Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s August visit to New Delhi, where he spoke the language of rapprochement and agreed to reopen border trade through Shipki La, only to fly directly to Islamabad-Kabul and signal an upgraded “CPEC 2.0” with an extension into Afghanistan. The juxtaposition laid bare the fragility of any diplomatic thaw between India and China: India may engage tactically in multilateral forums, but it remains uncompromising on violations of sovereignty and the entrenched Sino-Pakistani strategic axis.

Equally significant was Modi’s bilateral meeting with Politburo Standing Committee member Cai Qi, Xi Jinping’s chief of staff. That engagement was not routine diplomatic theatre; Cai, as Director of the General Office of the CPC, is effectively the executor of Xi’s directives. His involvement signals that Beijing is willing to operationalize tactical de-escalation measures—from restoring visas and flights, to facilitating border trade. Yet, it also underlines the limits of such moves: they are transactional concessions managed by Xi’s inner circle, not evidence of structural trust between the two sides.

The choreography of Tianjin thus revealed a paradox: convergence at the level of optics, but incongruity at the level of interests. India’s SCO presence was not an embrace of China’s Eurasian vision but an exercise in strategic autonomy—projecting India as an indispensable voice in the diversification of multilateralism. Moreover, India’s engagement of Central Asian states via the SCO is underpinned by its own energy and security interests, driven by minilateral engagements like the India-Central Asia Forum, scheduled for the second half of 2025.

Tactical Balance of India–China Relations

The bilateral engagements at the SCO summit highlight the current phase of “tactical civility” in India–China relations. This civility is necessary but fragile, rooted in the recognition by both sides that escalation is costly, yet marked by the challenges of resolving the fundamental disputes that drive mistrust.

Wang Yi’s August 2025 visit to New Delhi set the stage for this dynamic. His call for a “cooperative pas de deux of the dragon and the elephant” invoked the civilizational imagery of coexistence, but for India, such rhetoric obscures the asymmetry of Chinese rhetoric and actions—from its continued military build-up along a disputed border to its shielding of Pakistan diplomatically and the expansion of CPEC into Afghanistan which hampers the “win-win” cooperation President Xi referred to. PM Modi’s blunt reminder in Delhi that peace on the border is a prerequisite for normalisation of relations signalled that India will not decouple atmospherics from core security interests. This conditionality—no “normal” without disengagement—has effectively inverted the leverage equation, forcing Beijing to engage on New Delhi’s terms.

Nonetheless, the SCO interactions revealed that the relationship is unlikely to undergo structural repair in the near term. Even as border trade at Shipki La and resumed flights project an image of rapprochement, the extension of CPEC into Afghanistan underscores the fragility of trust. For India, this is not just an economic project but a violation of sovereignty and diplomatic provocation. The contradiction—cooperation in protocol-heavy settings alongside coercion in strategic domains—continues to define the relationship. Thus, while the Tianjin meeting reflected a reengagement following the hostility of 2020–2022, they do not mark a structural reset.

India–Russia–China Bonhomie and the Multipolar Lens

The SCO summit also featured the symbolic revival of the Russia–India–China (RIC) trilateral on the sidelines. Modi, Xi, and Putin projected a veneer of Eurasian unity, situating the SCO as a counterweight to Western-led frameworks. For China, this performance reaffirmed its narrative of being a stabilising pillar of multipolarity. For Russia, it provided diplomatic breathing space amid sanctions and the fallout of the Ukraine war. Moreover, the presence of Russian and North Korean leaders at China’s “Victory Day” military parade indicates the mutual interest that Beijing has leveraged to signal multipolarity. For India, however, the Russia-China-India trilateral was less about bonhomie and more about hedging—demonstrating that New Delhi retains manoeuvrability despite frictions with Washington over tariffs and energy policy.

The Tianjin Declaration, with its inclusion of India’s security concerns, reflected not only India’s rising clout within the SCO but also China’s recognition that ignoring Indian sensitivities risks undermining the group’s unity and its own multipolar emphasis. This is a subtle but important recalibration by Beijing. India’s calculus after the SCO is clear: engaging China and Russia within multilateral settings provides diplomatic space and signals autonomy to Washington, but it does not alter the structural reality of rivalry with Beijing. The SCO week revealed India’s ability to extract tactical gains, gain recognition for norms on terrorism, and project resilience amid U.S. pressure. What it did not reveal was any pathway to genuine reconciliation with China. The art of India’s Eurasian diplomacy, therefore, lies in balancing participation without acquiescence—leveraging multilateralism for visibility, while keeping the core of the India–China rivalry firmly bounded by sovereignty and security.