Is India's China reset just wishful thinking?

History suggests this detente won't last.

- Mihir Sharma

President Xi Jinping and Russia's President Vladimir Putin, there is no question that this was a considered, deliberate choice — a statement that India will give the authoritarians to its north yet another chance to show that they are worthy of trust.

This is a massive policy shift in a relatively short time. Just five years ago, Chinese and Indian soldiers were killing each other on the frozen heights of the Himalayan border they dispute. They stayed eyeball-to-eyeball while New Delhi slowly cut connections with Beijing — banning Chinese investment, throwing out TikTok and cultivating an independent constituency in the Global South.

Indian diplomacy presented the country as looking outward to the "Indo-Pacific", a vast maritime area defined to include the US, instead of to a "Eurasia" dominated by continental powers like Russia and China.

If Mr Modi now wants to reach out a hand to the leaders of Eurasia, one might assume it is entirely because India has been insulted and rejected by the US — laden with higher tariffs than almost all its peers and continually needled by US President Donald Trump's advisers and officials.