From “Bharat” to a Multipolar World: Jaishankar’s UNGA 2026 Doctrine of Peace and Reformed Multilateralism

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India–China Before BRICS: Building Border Guardrails for Strategic Coexistence

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 "As Xi Jinping prepares for the BRICS Summit in New Delhi, new military and diplomatic channels suggest that India and China are learning to manage their rivalry—so it does not derail wider cooperation among the Global South."


A New Signal Before BRICS


  • The most important India–China development ahead of the upcoming "BRICS Summit-2026 New Delhi" did not take place in a capital city or at a multilateral conference table, but happened along the disputed Himalayan frontier.
      

  • On September 6, India and China held Corps Commander-level military talks in Arunachal Pradesh for the first time, at "the Wacha–Damai Border Personnel Meeting point" in the Kibithoo sector fo Arunachal Pradesh. "Lieutenant General Girish Kalia," commander of the Indian Army's III Corps, or "Spear Corps," led the Indian side. The Chinese delegation included senior People's Liberation Army officers. The talks focused on the eastern sector of the "Line of Actual Control (LAC)" and the need to maintain peace and tranquillity along the frontier.
  • The significance of this meeting, however, extends far beyond Arunachal Pradesh.
  • It comes at a moment when India and China are attempting to stabilise their bilateral relationship sufficiently to allow cooperation in larger multilateral forums—particularly "BRICS."

From the Galwan Crisis to Border Guardrails



  • To understand why this matters, we have to return to June 2020.
  • On June 15, Indian and Chinese troops fought a violent hand-to-hand confrontation in the Galwan Valley, a valley of the Galwan River, in eastern Ladakh. Twenty Indian soldiers were killed. China officially acknowledged four PLA deaths, although the wider scale of Chinese casualties has remained disputed.
  • The confrontation triggered the most serious deterioration in India–China relations in decades. 
  1. Military deployments expanded, 
  2. diplomatic trust collapsed, and 
  3. the two nuclear-armed neighbours entered a prolonged standoff.
  • "The Corps Commander mechanism" subsequently became one of the principal military channels for managing the crisis. Twenty-three rounds of Corps Commander-level talks were held at "Chushul-Moldo" in eastern Ladakh, and the mechanism became closely associated with managing the post-2020 confrontation.
  • What makes the latest development different is that this senior military dialogue has now been extended to the eastern sector. And that matters because Arunachal Pradesh represents another highly sensitive component of the unresolved boundary dispute.
  • The Wacha–Damai meeting point itself is not new. It has been part of the border-meeting architecture for years. What is new is the level of engagement: senior Corps Commander-level officers using this eastern-sector channel to address concerns along the LAC.
  • In other words, India and China are not creating an entirely new border mechanism, but they are upgrading and expanding the existing architecture of communication.

Diplomacy and Military Communication Moving Together

  • The timing is particularly significant.
  • The Arunachal military talks followed the 25th round of Special Representatives' negotiations on the boundary question, held in Beijing on August 25 between India's National Security Adviser "Ajit Doval" and "China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi."
  • The two sides produced an eight-point outcome and consensus. They reaffirmed their commitment to- 
  1. maintaining peace and tranquillity along the border, 
  2. advancing negotiations toward a framework for a boundary settlement, and 
  3. addressing developments on the ground through existing diplomatic and military channels.
  • More importantly, the two countries agreed to establish-
  1. two additional meeting points for senior military-level engagement, and 
  2. two additional military hotline channels in the eastern and middle sectors.
  • That is the larger story. India and China are not resolving their boundary dispute overnight; instead, they are constructing guardrails around their competition.
  • A disputed boundary may remain unresolved for years, but communication between commanders, diplomatic channels between senior officials and direct contact between political leaderships can reduce the risk that a local incident becomes a major military confrontation.
  • For BRICS, that distinction is extremely important.


Why This Matters for BRICS

  • BRICS is no longer a small five-country grouping. It has expanded significantly and now brings together major emerging economies with different political systems, strategic interests and relationships with the Western world.
  • India's objective is not to transform BRICS into an anti-Western bloc. New Delhi has consistently sought a platform that can-
  1. advance "Global South interests," 
  2. reform global governance and 
  3. expand practical cooperation in areas such as trade, technology, energy, finance and sustainable development.
  • But achieving that requires a certain degree of internal stability, and the relationship between India and China is central to that equation.
  • China is one of India's principal "strategic competitors." At the same time, China is one of the most consequential members of BRICS.
  • That creates an unavoidable paradox:
"India needs to compete with China bilaterally while cooperating with China multilaterally."
  • The more stable the bilateral relationship becomes, the easier it is for the two countries to prevent their disputes from paralysing the wider BRICS agenda; that's why the Arunachal talks should be viewed in a broader context. The very reason for it is that both countries are not simply about preventing a border incident, but they are about creating enough strategic predictability for India and China to continue competing without allowing that competition to contaminate every area of their "multilateral relationship."     

The Diplomatic Thaw

  • This process has been building gradually.
  • In October 2024, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping met on the sidelines of the "BRICS Summit in Kazan, Russia-2024," following the October 2024 agreement on patrolling arrangements in Depsang and Demchok. India subsequently stated that disengagement had been achieved from all the 2020 friction points.
  • The diplomatic process continued in 2025.
  • Modi and Xi met in "Tianjin" on August 31, 2025, on the sidelines of the "Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit." The meeting built upon the momentum generated after the October 2024 engagement and reflected an effort to place the relationship on a more stable footing.
  • Now, in September 2026, the two leaders have again crossed paths at the "SCO summit in Bishkek." Their interaction was brief, but the symbolism was important: 
"After years of confrontation, direct political communication has become increasingly routine again."
  • At the same time, military and diplomatic mechanisms have been expanding. This is a classic example of "layered diplomacy," where 
  1. Political leaders communicate at the top.
  2. Special Representatives handle the boundary question.
  3. The Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination addresses border affairs.
  4. Military commanders communicate on the ground.
  5. Hotlines provide additional crisis-management channels.
  • And that's how each layer serves a different purpose.

The BRICS Test

  • Now comes the bigger test.
  • India will host the 18th BRICS Leaders' Summit in New Delhi on September 12–13, 2026. The agenda is expected to encompass issues including-
  1. global governance reform, 
  2. trade, 
  3. finance, 
  4. technology, 
  5. energy security, 
  6. artificial intelligence and 
  7. other priorities relevant to the Global South.
  • Chinese President Xi Jinping is widely expected to attend; if confirmed, it would be his first visit to India since 2019, when he travelled to "Mamallapuram (Mahabalipuram), Tamil Nadu" for the second informal summit with Modi.
  • That makes the sequence striking, as shown in the following infographics.
  • The message is not that India and China have ended their strategic rivalry. Certainly, they have not, and there are valid reasons for that.
  1. The boundary question remains unresolved. 
  2. Strategic competition continues. 
  3. Mutual trust remains limited.
  • But something important is changing. Both sides appear increasingly willing to manage rivalry rather than allow rivalry to manage the relationship.

From Confrontation to "Competitive Coexistence"

  • This brings us back to the argument of yesterday's GeoPoliNomic analysis.
  • BRICS cannot solve the India–China boundary dispute, but BRICS can create an environment in which India and China have reasons to keep their bilateral relationship sufficiently stable for broader cooperation to continue.
  • The emerging model is therefore not friendship. It is, too, not even traditional “peaceful coexistence”, but it is something more pragmatic:
"competitive coexistence with guardrails."
  1. India and China can compete for influence in Asia
  2. disagree over the boundary, 
  3. pursue different strategic partnerships and 
  4. defend their national interests—while simultaneously cooperating on selected global issues through BRICS.
  • The new military dialogue in Arunachal Pradesh is therefore significant not merely because it concerns one stretch of the LAC, but represents another layer of communication designed to ensure that a bilateral dispute does not derail a larger multilateral project.
  • And as Xi Jinping potentially arrives in New Delhi, the central question will not simply be whether India and China can shake hands. It will be whether they can keep their rivalry within manageable boundaries while working together on issues that extend far beyond their bilateral relationship.
  • For BRICS—and for the wider Global South—that may be the more consequential test.

Thanks.
Critical Comments are welcome.


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