Rebooting the India–China Dialogue: A Practical Briefing Note

(Prepared after a pre-consultation using the DeepSeek open-source Chinese AI model as a thought partner; framed as an objective briefing for the both delegations.)

Author Credentials:

Karan Bir Singh Sidhu is a retired Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer and former Special Chief Secretary, Punjab. He writes at the intersection of geopolitics, U.S. tariff policy, and international trade imperatives, with a particular interest in India’s strategic recalibration with China after a prolonged period of diplomatic frost. His work examines how New Delhi navigates complex global alignments in an increasingly multipolar world.

Author’s Note:

This working paper does not purport to encapsulate the agenda for the current visit. It rather offers a scalable framework for a broader, consistent series of meetings—this week, at the SCO in early September, and beyond—so the two countries can select, sequence, and measure low-risk deliverables without pre-judging political decisions.

From New Delhi to the SCO: A Short Runway for Pragmatic Gains

With Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in New Delhi for talks with National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar—alongside a courtesy call on Prime Minister Narendra Modi—attention is already turning to early September, when Mr Modi is expected to travel to China for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit. The New Delhi meetings unfold against volatile headwinds: Washington’s tariff squeeze on India over purchases of Russian oil, a temporary negotiating reprieve for China, and parallel transatlantic diplomacy—President Donald Trump’s discussions with European leaders and President Volodymyr Zelensky—aimed at defusing the Ukraine crisis. In this environment, India and China must show they can manage differences while extracting concrete, near-term wins without casting BRICS as an anti-American enterprise. The prize is modest but meaningful: stability, predictability, and a pathway to gradual normalisation.

Operating Principles: How to Make Progress Without Drama

No bloc theatrics. Keep BRICS framed as a pragmatic development and standards platform, not a geopolitical cudgel.
Quiet deliverables before grand bargains. Bank small, inspectable gains that de-risk the relationship.
Reciprocity with domestic space. Design steps that are symmetrical in benefit and do not force public “concessions”.
Risk management at the border. Safety mechanisms first; cartography later.
Economic co-production over import anxiety. Shift narratives from deficits to jobs, investment and interoperable standards.

The QUAD Factor: Assurances Without Alignment

From New Delhi’s vantage point, the QUAD is a non-treaty, agenda-specific forum centred on humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, maritime domain awareness, and resilient supply chains—not a military bloc. India recognises that Beijing reads QUAD naval drills, interoperability initiatives, and tech coordination as creeping containment, so we propose practical guardrails to narrow perception gaps. India will reaffirm that the QUAD carries no mutual-defence obligations, no basing or logistics access aimed at third countries, and no communiqués touching the Sino-Indian boundary, consistent with our strategic autonomy.

In parallel, China can calibrate rhetoric to avoid threat inflation and treat QUAD’s civilian standards work as non-militarised. Greater transparency around the Malabar exercise—its scope and locations—paired with a China–India maritime safety hotline and advance notifications for major drills, would reduce misreads at sea. Finally, both sides should acknowledge freedom of navigation and ensure that supply-chain initiatives avoid discriminatory language—assurances that preserve space for the bilateral agenda even as each engages in selective plurilateral cooperation.

The Ten-Step Ladder: From Easiest to Hardest

Each item carries a 90–180-day milestone and a simple public metric (e.g., visas issued, flights restored, hotline uptime, notifications filed). The framing is reciprocal facilitation rather than one-way “concessions”.

1) Joint public messaging (easiest).
Agree a restrained, forward-looking readout: stabilisation, development and people-to-people links; BRICS as economic plumbing; explicit respect for each other’s strategic autonomy. KPI: joint statement issued; press lines aligned.

2) Mobility micro-deals.
Pilot business e-visas (12-month, multiple entry, published service standards) and student/faculty fast lanes, alongside phased restoration of direct flights. India simplifies entry for Chinese business travellers to identified hubs; China streamlines access for Indians to Hong Kong/Macau under managed group quotas. KPI: visa turnaround days; weekly seat capacity.

3) Pilgrimage facilitation.
Operationalise a digitised, quota-based corridor to Kailash–Manasarovar: standard medical/insurance protocols, certified guides, fixed seasonal windows and transparent fees. In parallel, co-promote Chinese pilgrim and heritage circuits to Bodh Gaya, Sarnath, Sanchi and Nalanda with bundled group visas. KPI: pilgrim slots filled; zero serious incidents.

4) Digital trust instead of app wars.
Replace blanket bans and politicised approvals with a trusted-operations regime: local data residency, independent source-code/SDK audits by accredited labs, clear content-moderation and grievance pathways, and enforceable penalties for breaches. This creates room for selective re-entry of compliant platforms in India and clearer rules for Indian platforms in China. KPI: audits completed; compliant apps approved.

5) Greenfield investment & co-production.
Create one-stop investment lanes for Indian firms in China (consumer health, FMCG, professional services) and for Chinese manufacturers in India (electronics, EV components, solar, appliances) tied to local R&D and tier-2 supplier development. Frame as jobs and resilience, not dumping vs substitution. KPI: projects approved; local content percentages.

6) Targeted market access to re-balance the deficit.
Time-bound expansion of tariff-rate quotas and fast-track approvals for Indian pharmaceuticals (including APIs where compliant), agri-products, marine exports, IT-enabled services and entertainment content; in exchange, India implements customs/testing fast lanes and predictable standards for specified Chinese inputs into Make-in-India supply chains. KPI: quarterly deficit delta; approval timelines.

7) IP, standards and payments plumbing.
Stand up a joint IP enforcement hotline to accelerate action on counterfeits; run standards interoperability pilots in EV charging, solar modules and medical devices; explore limited rupee–yuan settlements for non-sanctioned, low-risk trade to reduce FX exposure without signalling monetary bloc politics. KPI: cases actioned; standards mapped; share of bills settled.

8) Border confidence-building measures.
Institutionalise real-time incident hotlines; predictable disengagement drill calendars; no-build buffers of X km and infrastructure transparency bands within Y km of the LAC; 24-hour incident notification and joint medical evacuation drills. The goal is risk containment and incident management, not a settlement. KPI: hotline response times; drills conducted; months without incidents.

9) Tibet/Dalai Lama: de-politise, don’t monetise.
Treat religious and cultural engagement as non-political. India maintains a low political profile for exile activity; China refrains from over-interpreting cultural or religious gatherings. Expand heritage scholarship and monastic exchanges under academic umbrellas. Avoid any transactional framing that trades personalities for territory—publicly indefensible and strategically brittle. KPI: cultural exchanges held; absence of politicised flare-ups.

10) Principles-first border framework (hardest).
If CBMs hold for a sustained period, negotiate a principles paper: respect for settled populations; cartographic freeze pending demarcation; non-encroachment pledges; notification rules for new infrastructure; and a timetable for sector-by-sector dispute processing. A final settlement remains distant; principles lower ceiling risk and create predictability. KPI: paper initialled; working groups active.

Tech & Political Optics: Three Crisp Lines

Taiwan. Stability rests on predictability, not theatre. India continues its longstanding One-China formulation and keeps Taiwan ties at working level for economic-cultural purposes; China avoids over-reading routine contacts if kept low-visibility. Both sides discourage high-profile visits or political signalling.

App bans and digital confidence. Instead of relitigating the past, the trusted-operations framework enables compliant services to re-enter (or expand) on a probationary basis, with periodic audits and user-rights guarantees. Reciprocity should be explicit and measurable.

Indian entrepreneurship in China. Welcome targeted Indian investment in Chinese consumer and services sectors with regulatory shepherding and streamlined dispute resolution and IP protection. Publish a trusted investors list from both sides to de-risk approvals.

Corridors, Neighbours, and Hard Geography

Myanmar and the tri-junction. Political volatility argues for a modular, inspectable approach: short road segments with independent engineering audits; dual-lane usage (humanitarian plus licit commerce); joint anti-trafficking and anti-narco cooperation; and an explicit commitment that corridors will not be repurposed by armed groups. Synchronise with India’s Act East projects and China’s western development—no branding contests, no zero-sum port politics.

Afghanistan and the Wakhan. Express conditional openness to humanitarian and licit trade flows under UN-compliant monitoring and strict security benchmarks. Avoid entanglement with disputed territories and ensure that any routing is politically neutral and evidence-led on security.

Kashmir/POK optics. Projects should not prejudice legal positions. Where infrastructure touches sensitive belts, embed trade-only usage, third-party monitoring where feasible, and explicit neutrality clauses. Keep technical teams—not political principals—front and centre.

Water, Rivers and the Atmosphere

Brahmaputra/Yarlung Tsangpo. Conclude a Hydrological Data & Early-Warning Accord with real-time sharing on monsoon peaks, glacial lake outburst risks and sediment loads. Invite observer missions by Indian scientists to agreed upstream stations during commissioning of major works. Pledge no-significant-harm design and seasonal transparency windows.

Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) context. While IWT is an India–Pakistan instrument, upstream transparency from all riparians reduces misperception. Offer voluntary notifications of material works on relevant tributaries, while encouraging technical handling over political escalation.

Weather modification and geoengineering. Commit to regionally notified experiments, independent scientific review, and joint monsoon science workshops to validate models and ensure no cross-border distortion of rainfall patterns. Transparency is the antidote to conjecture.

Meeting Choreography: Who Hears What—and When

NSA meeting: anchor border CBMs, hotlines, disengagement calendars, no-build buffers and transparency bands, plus incident-notification norms;
External Affairs Minister: close on mobility micro-deals, pilgrimage facilitation, market-access pilots, the deficit dashboard and the IP hotline, with dated tasking notes;
Courtesy call on the Prime Minister: emphasise jobs, investment and youth exchanges, reiterate respect for India’s strategic autonomy, and position deliverables as mutual facilitation, not zero-sum trades. Press handling: under-promise, over-deliver; avoid headline claims that later box principals in.

Risks to Pre-empt—and How

Domestic optics in India or China. Communicate every step as mutual risk-reduction or mutual facilitation; avoid the language of “concession”.
Third-party narrative traps. Keep BRICS language economic and standards-oriented; avoid security signalling that implies bloc politics.
Border surprises. Publish a CBM calendar and notification norms for sensitive works to prevent misreads.
Digital trust backlash. Let independent auditors and published compliance reports carry legitimacy; build in user-rights protections.

Why This Sequencing Works

This stack builds quick, human-centred wins (mobility, pilgrimage) atop practical economic plumbing (investment lanes, standards, payments), then uses that ballast to stabilise the frontier (CBMs) and, only if performance holds, to draft a principles-first framework for the boundary question. It neither ignores the hard files nor lets them dominate every conversation. Crucially, it offers benefits that travellers, students, pilgrims, exporters and factory workers can feel within months, building a constituency for patience on the hardest problems.

The Closing Arc: Two Giants, Fewer Frictions, A Calmer World

If even half of the low-hanging set and a handful of medium-game pieces are banked in the coming quarters, the India–China lane becomes steadier, calmer and more useful to both societies. That, in turn, creates the political headroom to discuss boundary principles without fear of daily flare-ups. As President Trump engages European leaders and President Zelensky in search of a stabiliser for the Ukraine theatre, a visibly less brittle Sino-Indian relationship lowers global risk, reassures markets and anchors Asian supply chains. The objective is not a grand bargain; it is a string of workable bargains—quietly stitched together, rigorously verified, and patiently expanded. That is how two Asian giants with long memories and immense ambitions can move from episodic crisis management to durable, interest-driven cooperation—and arrive at the September SCO stage with proof, not promises.