China-India-Pakistan triangle: When Xi meets Modi, a little less love this time

The last time Xi Jinping ( 習近平 ) visited India, two years ago, Narendra Modi made an unprecedented gesture of receiving the Chinese leader in his home state of Gujarat rather than the capital, Delhi. They signed billion-dollar deals, sat on a swing at a riverside park, smiled at each other, and the shutterbugs went nuts.

There was hope in the air. Modi, freshly elected as India’s prime minister, was being widely hailed in the Chinese media as a possible Indian Nixon ­– a man with both the mandate and the personality to reset a fraught relationship.

Xi, the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao, was seen as the one who could put a lid on the thorny border issue that has bedevilled relations between the two Asian giants. But by the end of that three-day visit, the mood had swung back to the usual suspicion and hostility, with reports pouring in of Chinese and Indian soldiers facing off on the border.

This time, even before Xi has touched down in Goa to attend a BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) meeting at the weekend, the mood has been decidedly sour and the air acrid with the whiff of gunpowder though Diwali, India’s festival of lights, is a fortnight away. It’s trouble at the border again, this time between India and Pakistan. But Asia’s tangled borders and unique geopolitical tangos mean China is enmeshed in it anyway.