Handshake Without Trust

Can two nuclear-armed neighbors cooperate without trusting each other? Can India welcome China to a BRICS summit while simultaneously reminding Beijing that peace at the border is non-negotiable? Can trade expand when strategic suspicion remains deeply embedded? Should diplomacy require friendship, or merely predictability? And perhaps the most important question: has India discovered that the most effective way of dealing with China is neither confrontation nor accommodation, but calibrated engagement backed by strategic memory?

The evolving India–China relationship provides a fascinating answer.

India appears to be developing a distinctive doctrine for dealing with Beijing: shake hands, keep talking, keep trading, but never confuse engagement with trust. This is not reconciliation. It is not containment. It is certainly not appeasement. It is something considerably more sophisticated: competitive coexistence under conditions of controlled distrust.

Ahead of the BRICS summit scheduled in New Delhi on September 12–13, 2026, this doctrine is becoming increasingly visible. Reports of military friction near Taksing in Arunachal Pradesh generated renewed concern about the Line of Actual Control (LAC). Indian defense authorities disputed reports alleging Chinese encroachment, while Beijing described the border situation as "generally stable." Importantly, both sides agreed to continue military and diplomatic communication.

Yet New Delhi simultaneously reiterated the principle that has increasingly become the foundation of its China policy: The state of the border will influence the state of the relationship. That single proposition may tell us more about contemporary Indian statecraft than dozens of diplomatic communiqués.

From "Hindi-Chini Bhai-Bhai" to Strategic Memory

India's China policy carries an unusual historical burden.

The optimism surrounding Hindi-Chini Bhai-Bhai during the 1950s collapsed dramatically with the 1962 war. Decades later, India and China rebuilt diplomatic relations through a series of mechanisms designed to prevent their unresolved territorial dispute from overwhelming the broader relationship.

For years, the implicit formula was relatively straightforward: Manage the border dispute while developing the rest of the relationship. Trade could grow. Diplomatic exchanges could expand. Multilateral cooperation could continue. The boundary question could remain unresolved. That model worked — imperfectly — for decades because relative tranquility along the frontier allowed economic and diplomatic engagement to operate separately.

India's own official position acknowledged this architecture. In a 2020 parliamentary statement, the government explained that bilateral relations had been able to progress since 1988 while negotiations over the boundary continued—but also emphasized that any serious disturbance of peace along the LAC would inevitably affect the positive direction of the relationship. Then came Galwan. And Galwan changed the equation.

Galwan Was Not Merely a Clash. It Was a Doctrinal Turning Point

On June 15, 2020, Indian and Chinese soldiers engaged in brutal hand-to-hand fighting in the Galwan Valley. Twenty Indian soldiers were killed. China subsequently acknowledged the deaths of four of its soldiers. It was the first deadly confrontation between the two militaries along the disputed frontier since 1975. The physical geography of the confrontation was small. Its strategic consequences were enormous.

India effectively concluded that the earlier compartmentalization model had reached its limit.

China could no longer expect India to treat military pressure on the border as one isolated disagreement while business, technology, investment and diplomacy continued normally elsewhere. Galwan, therefore, produced something more consequential than a military standoff. It produced strategic conditionality.

The message from New Delhi became increasingly clear: Cooperation with China is possible. Normalization with China is conditional. That distinction matters enormously.

Geography Makes Strategic Amnesia Impossible

India's official estimate places the India–China border at approximately 3,488 km, stretching across Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh.

But this is not a conventional internationally demarcated frontier. There is no mutually agreed delineation of the entire LAC. Both countries maintain differing perceptions in several areas, meaning patrols operating according to their respective understandings can encounter one another. Indian government documents have repeatedly identified this lack of common delineation as a structural source of transgressions and confrontation.

This produces a peculiar geopolitical reality. Two ancient civilizations. Two nuclear powers. Two enormous populations. Two rising economies. Two militaries operating across some of the world's most inhospitable terrain. And between them lies a frontier whose precise alignment is not mutually accepted. Under such conditions, diplomacy cannot eliminate geography. It can only manage it.

The 2024 Breakthrough: De-escalation Without Forgetfulness

A significant breakthrough arrived in October 2024. India and China reached an agreement on patrolling arrangements in Depsang and Demchok on October 21. The agreement enabled disengagement from the remaining friction points created during the 2020 crisis and provided for the resumption of patrolling — and, where applicable, grazing — according to longstanding practices.

Shortly afterward, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping held their first formal bilateral talks in approximately five years. The military withdrawal mattered. The political dialogue mattered. But neither represented restoration of the pre-2020 relationship. India's approach since then has looked more like controlled normalization. The doors have reopened. The locks have not been removed.

Jaishankar's ‘Three-M Formula’

External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar has repeatedly articulated the intellectual architecture behind India's approach. During his July 2026 meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Manila, Jaishankar reiterated that peace and tranquility in the border areas were a prerequisite for normal bilateral relations. He also emphasized that a stable relationship must rest upon three principles: Mutual respect. Mutual interest. Mutual sensitivity. He simultaneously raised India's concerns about market access, the trade imbalance and supply-chain predictability. This is important because it shows that India's China doctrine is no longer exclusively territorial. It is becoming multidimensional.

Border security cannot be divorced from economic security. Economic dependence cannot be divorced from technological security. Technological dependence cannot be divorced from strategic autonomy. And strategic autonomy cannot survive without credible military deterrence. This is foreign policy as an integrated system rather than a collection of independent relationships.

The Paradox: Strategic Rival, Economic Giant

China presents India with a problem that Pakistan never could. Pakistan represents primarily a security challenge. China represents a simultaneous security challenge, economic partner, technological competitor, manufacturing dependency, geopolitical rival and multilateral interlocutor. That makes binary policy almost impossible. The economic numbers demonstrate the dilemma vividly.

According to India's Department of Commerce, India exported approximately $14.25 billion worth of merchandise to China during 2024–25 while importing approximately $113.45 billion. That represents bilateral merchandise trade of roughly $127.7 billion, and a merchandise deficit approaching $100 billion.

The imbalance continued into 2025–26. During April–October 2025, India's exports to China rose 24.7% to $10.02 billion, but the bilateral trade deficit nevertheless widened from $58.09 billion to approximately $63.97 billion.

This is where simplistic calls to "decouple from China" encounter economic reality.

India imports Chinese electronic components, machinery, active pharmaceutical ingredients, mobile-phone parts, industrial intermediates and other inputs that feed domestic manufacturing and exports. The Indian government itself has acknowledged this composition of the trade deficit. India, therefore, faces a paradox: It must deter China militarily while continuing to transact with China economically, and simultaneously reduce the vulnerabilities created by that economic relationship. That is not contradiction. That is statecraft.

From Decoupling to De-risking

India's long-term strategy therefore appears less likely to resemble complete economic decoupling and more likely to involve selective de-risking.

Decoupling asks: "How do we stop dealing with China?" De-risking asks: "Where would dependence on China become strategically dangerous?" Those are entirely different questions.

A country may import toys, household goods or consumer electronics without creating an existential vulnerability. But dependence becomes strategically significant when it concerns semiconductors, telecommunications infrastructure, APIs, critical minerals, power equipment, digital networks, drones, advanced manufacturing inputs or defense-related technologies.

India's task is, therefore, not to eliminate economic interaction. It is to distinguish commercial dependence from strategic dependence. That distinction may become one of the defining economic doctrines of Indian foreign policy.

BRICS: Cooperation Without Convergence

This brings us to the apparent contradiction of BRICS. Why should India share a geopolitical platform with China while simultaneously strengthening security cooperation with countries concerned about Chinese power? Because India does not view international relations as a collection of exclusive clubs. 

India participates in BRICS with China and Russia. It participates in the Quad with the United States, Japan and Australia. It maintains strategic partnerships with Western countries. It retains a longstanding relationship with Russia. It engages Iran. It deepens ties with the Gulf. It works with ASEAN. And it competes with China. This is not diplomatic inconsistency. It is multi-alignment.

India's foreign policy increasingly rejects the proposition that cooperation with one power requires hostility toward another. More importantly, cooperation within an institution does not require strategic trust between its members.

India and China can, therefore, cooperate within BRICS on issues concerning multilateral financial institutions, development, Global South representation and reform of international governance without agreeing on the Asian balance of power.

This represents an important evolution in Indian diplomacy: Institutional cooperation is transactional; strategic trust must be earned.

The BRICS Summit Is a ‘Test,’ Not a ‘Celebration’

The September BRICS summit in New Delhi will consequently carry symbolism far beyond summit photographs. Chinese participation would demonstrate that bilateral communication has recovered substantially from the post-Galwan freeze. But the handshake must not be misinterpreted.

A photograph of Modi and Xi cannot erase the Himalayas. A summit communiqué cannot delineate the LAC. A bilateral meeting cannot substitute for sustained border stability. Diplomatic choreography is not strategic reconciliation. India seems increasingly conscious of this distinction.

The handshake may therefore signify something deliberately limited:

We will talk because we must. We will cooperate where interests overlap. We will compete where interests diverge. And we will remember where trust was broken. That may be precisely the equilibrium India seeks.

Arunachal Pradesh: Why the Eastern Sector Still Matters

The recent reports concerning Taksing in Arunachal Pradesh demonstrate why normalization remains fragile. Indian defense authorities rejected allegations of recent Chinese encroachment as unsubstantiated, while the Chinese Foreign Ministry characterized the overall border situation as generally stable. The two countries nevertheless agreed during the 36th meeting of their Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on India–China Border Affairs to maintain communication through military and diplomatic channels. That combination is revealing. Disagreement remains. Military vigilance remains. Diplomatic communication remains. None excludes the others.

Indeed, that may increasingly become the normal condition of India–China relations.

The objective is no longer necessarily to eliminate rivalry. The objective is to prevent rivalry from becoming war. That is a much more realistic strategic goal.

The Emerging Doctrine: Engage, Deter, Diversify

India's China strategy can increasingly be understood through three verbs.

Engage.

Maintain diplomatic channels. Participate together in BRICS, the SCO and other multilateral institutions. Restore selected connectivity and people-to-people exchanges. Continue trade where economically rational.

Deter.

Maintain military readiness along the LAC. Accelerate border infrastructure. Improve surveillance, logistics and rapid deployment. Ensure that territorial coercion imposes costs.

Diversify.

Reduce excessive supply-chain dependence. Develop domestic manufacturing. Expand strategic partnerships. Build alternative technology ecosystems and strengthen economic relationships with Japan, Europe, ASEAN, the United States and others.

Together these produce what might be called: The EDD Doctrine — Engage, Deter and Diversify. Engagement without deterrence risks appeasement. Deterrence without engagement risks escalation. Economic dependence without diversification creates vulnerability. The three therefore reinforce one another.

Cooperation Is Not Trust

There is another philosophical shift hidden within India's approach. For decades, international diplomacy frequently treated cooperation as evidence of improving trust.

But India appears to be reversing that assumption. Countries do not need to trust each other before cooperating. They need only possess overlapping interests.

Trust is desirable. Predictability is essential. This is especially true between major powers. India can cooperate with China on climate change without trusting Chinese intentions along the LAC. It can participate with China in BRICS without accepting Beijing's geopolitical preferences. It can import Chinese industrial components while simultaneously developing domestic alternatives. It can hold summit meetings while strengthening border infrastructure. It can discuss a multipolar world while competing over the architecture of a multipolar Asia. There is no contradiction here once foreign policy is understood through interests rather than sentiment.

Multi-Alignment Is Not Fence-Sitting

Critics occasionally portray India's multi-alignment as reluctance to choose sides. That interpretation misses the deeper logic. Traditional alignment asks: Whose camp are you in? Strategic autonomy asks: What serves India's interests in this particular issue?

India's answer can, therefore, change across domains without becoming inconsistent.

On one issue, India may cooperate with Washington. On another, Moscow. On another, Paris. On another, Beijing. And on still another, none of them. This is not neutrality. It is issue-based sovereignty.

China, therefore, becomes an ideal test of Indian strategic autonomy because Beijing cannot conveniently be categorized as either friend or enemy. It is simultaneously competitor, neighbor, trading partner, geopolitical challenger and institutional collaborator. India's policy must, therefore, become equally multidimensional.

The Kautilyan Echo

There is something distinctly classical about this approach. Kautilya's Arthashastra never assumed that interstate relationships were permanently frozen into categories of friendship and hostility. The mandala conception of international relations recognized proximity, competing interests, alliances, counter-alliances and shifting calculations of power. A ruler was expected to evaluate circumstances rather than become emotionally attached to diplomatic labels.

Modern India obviously operates in a vastly different international system, governed by sovereignty, international law, nuclear deterrence, global markets and multilateral institutions. Yet the strategic intuition remains remarkably relevant: Deal with states as they are, not as you wish them to be.

China need not become India's friend for cooperation to occur. Nor must it become India's permanent enemy merely because competition exists. The task of statecraft is not to manufacture affection. It is to manage interests.

India Must Avoid Two Strategic Traps

There are, however, dangers at both extremes.

The first is strategic romanticism.
Improved summits, resumed flights, expanding trade or warm diplomatic language should never be mistaken for resolution of the structural competition between India and China. Galwan demonstrated the danger of allowing economic engagement to create assumptions about strategic intent.

The second danger is strategic fatalism.
India must equally resist the idea that conflict with China is inevitable. Two nuclear powers with enormous economic ambitions have powerful incentives to prevent their competition from becoming uncontrolled confrontation. India's objective should, therefore, be neither to trust blindly nor distrust irrationally. It should seek verifiable predictability.

That means agreements must produce observable behavior. Disengagement must be verifiable. Patrolling arrangements must function. Communication mechanisms must operate. Economic access must become more reciprocal. Supply chains must become more predictable. And diplomatic assurances must eventually be reflected in behavior on the ground. Trust should follow evidence, not precede it.

The Most Important Word Is "Conditional"

India–China normalization is real. But it is conditional. Direct flights have resumed, the Kailash Manasarovar Yatra has restarted, visa arrangements have seen movement, border trade has begun recovering and diplomatic engagement has intensified. Jaishankar publicly welcomed several of these confidence-building measures during his July 2026 interaction with Wang Yi. But these developments should not be confused with strategic reconciliation.

India is effectively telling China: Normalization is available, but it is reversible. That creates diplomatic leverage. If peace persists, cooperation can deepen. If coercion returns, normalization can slow. The border, therefore, becomes not merely a territorial issue but a strategic thermostat regulating the temperature of the entire bilateral relationship. That may prove to be one of India's most consequential foreign-policy innovations.

From ‘Strategic Autonomy’ to ‘Strategic Optionality’

India's deeper objective may ultimately be something even more ambitious. Strategic autonomy protects the freedom to decide. Strategic optionality creates multiple ways to act. 

If India depends excessively on Chinese manufacturing, its diplomatic freedom narrows. If it depends excessively on American technology, another vulnerability emerges. If it depends excessively on Russian defense equipment, options narrow again. True strategic autonomy, therefore, requires diversified economic, military, technological and diplomatic capabilities.

That is why India's China strategy cannot be separated from Atmanirbhar Bharat, semiconductor policy, defense indigenization, infrastructure development, supply-chain diversification and partnerships across the Indo-Pacific. Foreign policy increasingly begins inside the factory. National power begins inside the laboratory. Diplomatic autonomy begins inside the supply chain. A country cannot exercise strategic independence abroad if it possesses strategic dependencies at home.

A Handshake Is a Diplomatic Instrument, Not a Certificate of Friendship

There is a tendency in international politics to overinterpret symbolism. A summit becomes a "reset." A bilateral meeting becomes a "breakthrough." A photograph becomes evidence of "warming relations." But great-power relationships rarely move so neatly.

India's evolving China policy offers a more mature interpretation of diplomacy. The handshake does not mean: "I trust you." It means: "Our interests require us to talk." The meeting does not mean: "Our differences have disappeared." It means: "Our differences are important enough to manage." And cooperation does not mean: "We have become strategic partners." It means: "There are areas where our interests temporarily intersect." This distinction between engagement and endorsement may become increasingly important in a fragmented multipolar world.

Final Thoughts: When Memory Becomes Strategy

Perhaps the most important lesson from India's evolving China policy is remarkably simple: Diplomacy does not require amnesia. India does not have to choose between remembering Galwan and meeting Xi Jinping. It can do both. It does not have to choose between strengthening the Quad and participating in BRICS. It can do both.

It does not have to choose between trading with China and reducing dependence on China. It can do both. It does not have to choose between military preparedness and diplomatic engagement. Indeed, a credible diplomacy may require both. This represents a transition from the older vocabulary of friendship and hostility toward a much harder vocabulary of interests, capabilities, deterrence, resilience and optionality.

The India–China relationship may, therefore, never return to the comfortable optimism of earlier decades. Perhaps it should not. Strategic maturity does not mean refusing to shake the hand of a competitor. It means knowing exactly why you are shaking it, and what you will do when the handshake ends. 

The emerging Indian doctrine might, therefore, be summarized in six words: Engage where possible. Deter where necessary. And beneath both lies an unstated seventh: Remember.

Because nations that remember can reconcile cautiously. Nations that forget merely repeat history.

Can India transform distrust into predictable coexistence without allowing predictability to become complacency? 

Can economic engagement survive without creating strategic dependence? 

Can BRICS accommodate two Asian powers whose visions of multipolarity overlap globally but increasingly compete regionally? 

Can India build enough economic, technological and military capability to negotiate with China from genuine strength? 

And ultimately, will the twenty-first-century India–China relationship be defined by friendship, rivalry, or something far more sophisticated: a permanent handshake between two civilizations that cooperate because they must, compete because they will, and trust only when experience gives them reason to?

That may be the real architecture of India's emerging China doctrine: a handshake without trust, but never a handshake without strategy.