New Delhi: Chinese President Xi Jinping will spend just under 24 hours in Delhi this weekend for the BRICS summit, his first visit to India in seven years after a four-year military standoff along the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh froze high-level political engagement between the two countries.The visit, which had been anticipated for months, was formally announced by Beijing on Thursday. China’s foreign ministry said Xi would travel to New Delhi at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s invitation to attend the 18th BRICS Summit on September 12 and 13.Xi is scheduled to arrive in Delhi at around 12.25 pm on Saturday and is expected to hold a bilateral meeting with Modi in the evening. The two leaders are also due to attend a gala dinner for BRICS leaders beginning at 7.30 pm. On Sunday, Xi will attend the second session of the summit before leaving for the airport at around 12.20 pm, making his stay roughly 24 hours.He is travelling with a delegation of around 60-70 persons, including foreign minister Wang Yi and will be at New Delhi’s Taj Palace hotel.The last time Xi was in India was in October 2019, when he travelled to Mamallapuram for his second informal summit with Modi. That visit too lasted less than 24 hours, but it was a bilateral engagement focused on the India-China relationship rather than a multilateral summit.The 2019 meeting produced a new high-level economic and trade dialogue mechanism and commitments to improve military and security communication, while both sides reiterated the importance of managing differences along the boundary.But within a few months, the COVID-19 pandemic brought the entire world to a grinding halt. Then, in the summer of 2020, clashes along the border in eastern Ladakh escalated into a prolonged military standoff, resulting in the first fatalities on the India-China border in 45 years.The four-year military standoff disrupted virtually the entire political relationship. India and China subsequently held multiple military and diplomatic talks, eventually reaching an agreement in October 2024 on patrolling arrangements.That breakthrough paved the way for the first structured bilateral meeting between Modi and Xi in nearly five years, on the margins of the BRICS summit in Kazan a few days later. Modi said the two sides should view their relationship from a long-term strategic perspective and that differences should not develop into disputes.They met again in Tianjin in August 2025 on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit, which was the Indian PM’s first visit to the northern neighbour in seven years.Since then, the two sides have sought to gradually rebuild a relationship that had been badly damaged by the Ladakh crisis. Direct flights have resumed, the Kailash Mansarovar pilgrimage has restarted, and institutional exchanges have expanded. There has also been a gradual reopening of border trade and other people-to-people contacts.Last month, the National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi held the 25th round of talks under the Special Representatives mechanism in Beijing. The two sides subsequently issued a rare joint eight-point outcome document, agreeing that an Expert Group on Boundary Delimitation and a Working Group on Border Management would respectively advance discussions on an “Early and Substantial Harvest” in boundary delimitation and border management.There have also been signs of a deliberate effort by the Indian side to create a more favourable atmosphere ahead of Xi’s visit.In an article published in China’s state-run Global Times on September 9, India’s ambassador to China, Vikram Doraiswami, called for a “stable, predictable and amicable relationship” between the two countries, saying it was in the interest of their 2.8 billion people as well as peace and prosperity in Asia and beyond.Ahead of the BRICS summit, Doraiswami said the grouping offered an opportunity to deepen India-China cooperation on trade, connectivity, climate action, public health and the digital economy. Referring to Xi’s statement last year that the two countries were “cooperation partners, not rivals” and “each other’s development opportunities rather than threats”, he wrote that “peace and tranquility in the China-India border areas provide an essential foundation for this partnership”.Doraiswami called for the two sides to build on that foundation through “mutual respect, mutual sensitivity and mutual interest”, while ensuring that their differences “do not become disputes”.The ambassador’s intervention came alongside other notable statements from the Indian side that appeared aimed at creating political space for a broader engagement with Beijing.Former Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan, speaking at the GB Pant Memorial Lecture at Teen Murti Bhawan last week, said that although China represented an “absolutely different” and long-term comprehensive challenge, India’s relationship with Beijing “cannot be held hostage to only boundary issues”.Chauhan had also recently played down suggestions of direct Chinese military assistance to Pakistan during Operation Sindoor, saying that claims of China providing real-time intelligence to Pakistan were speculative and that the presence of Chinese technical personnel supporting Pakistan’s Chinese-origin military equipment could be explained by contractual obligations.Yet New Delhi’s formal position on the sequencing of normalisation has traditionally been more cautious. India has repeatedly maintained that peace and tranquillity along the border are an essential basis for the broader development of bilateral relations.There are also signs that the political thaw has yet to translate into a comparable easing of economic relations. While Beijing has pressed for greater access for Chinese businesses and a more favourable investment environment, India continues to be concerned about the trade deficit and restrictions in obtaining Chinese technology and equipment.In the financial year 2025-26, the government approved just one Chinese FDI proposal worth Rs 1 crore, while clearing 13 proposals from Hong Kong worth Rs 610.42 crore, according to Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade data.Investments from countries sharing a land border with India have been subject to prior government approval since April 2020 under Press Note 3, officially citing the need to prevent opportunistic takeovers of Indian companies during the Covid-19 pandemic.The government did ease the Press Note 3 framework in March by allowing investors with non-controlling beneficial ownership of up to 10 percent, from countries sharing a land border with India to invest through the automatic route, subject to sectoral caps and other conditions. But the relaxation specifically excluded entities registered in China, Hong Kong and other countries sharing a land border with India.A Reuters report this week said India’s Serious Fraud Investigation Office had recommended in May a detailed investigation into Xiaomi’s business in the country over alleged violations of foreign investment rules and questions surrounding its business model and movement of funds. The proposed investigation includes scrutiny of Xiaomi’s beneficial ownership disclosures and investments made after the 2020 changes to India’s foreign investment rules.China’s foreign ministry responded on Thursday by calling for a “fair, just, transparent and non-discriminatory” business environment for Chinese companies in India, while saying that China-India economic and trade cooperation was “mutually beneficial and win-win in nature”.