Beijing summit: Xi-Trump tango must wake Delhi up to a new geopolitical reality

Former R&AW chief Vikram Sood, in his latest book The Great Power Game, offers a revealing image from the 2022 G20 Summit in Bali. This was their first meeting after Joe Biden became President in January 2021, and it happened soon after the China-US stand-off following Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan.

“The meeting had the usual Chinese theatre when Xi Jinping arrived outside the conference room, planted himself firmly in front of the Chinese flag and waited. Then Xi watched Biden trundle across a long hotel lobby and the two shook hands vigorously. The Chinese leader was enacting ‘li’, which is Chinese decorum in the emperor’s court — the implication was that Biden was coming to him as a supplicant,” Sood writes.

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The symbolism was brutal and deliberate: America, for all its sole superpower status, was being made to look like a supplicant to the emperor’s palace.

This week, as Donald Trump met Xi Jinping in Beijing, the same theatre played out again — only more starkly this time. Trump, the self-styled alpha male of global power politics, suddenly became coy and courteous. He moved as Xi wanted. He softened his language to keep Xi in good humour. He carefully avoided provoking China on Taiwan. The man who has made his reputation as a bully looked visibly restrained.

This had happened before, when Trump met Vladimir Putin in Alaska. Maybe a bully recognises a bigger bully. The swagger disappears when confronted by men who wield power without apology.

The turn of events in Beijing should not be surprising. Several analysts had already predicted that Trump arrived in Beijing with limited leverage, if any. China, in contrast, held significant strategic cards, especially the Iran card. Beijing’s deep economic influence over Tehran gives Xi enormous clout in Middle Eastern geopolitics, particularly when America seems desperate to get out of Iran.

Additionally, China’s near-monopoly over critical minerals and its successful resistance to Trump’s tariffs have further strengthened Beijing’s negotiating position. America’s attempt to economically squeeze China has often produced mixed results, sometimes even strengthening Chinese resilience rather than weakening it. Trump, thus, arrived in Beijing with rhetoric, while Xi sat there with leverage.

And this is precisely where Bharat’s real problem begins.

For decades, many in New Delhi comforted themselves with the illusion that America needs Bharat as a counterweight to China. Washington, thus, has no choice but to keep Delhi on its side. That fantasy now seems to be ending.

The reality is that while Washington is slowly coming to terms with Beijing’s rise, it does not want Bharat to become another China. In a rare candid moment, especially in the realm of diplomacy, a senior Trump administration official recently conceded that in as many words: Washington will not repeat a China with Bharat. The US spent decades opening markets, transferring capital, and enabling China’s rise only to discover it had manufactured its greatest strategic challenger. It will not do the same for Bharat. This is the hard truth Indian strategic thinking must confront.

The term ‘G2’ — first popularised by economist Fred Bergsten in 2009 — describes a world order run by America and China. Even accepting G2 is painful for Washington because it means abandoning the illusion of unipolar supremacy. But G3? A world where Bharat joins the high table as the third decisive power? That is something America is even less willing to entertain. This explains Washington’s schizophrenic, blow hot and cold approach towards Delhi.

What adds to the Bharat problem is the fact that, unlike China, it cannot easily “hide its strength and bide its time”. Bharat’s democratic, argumentative and transparent political culture does not permit strategic silence in the same way authoritarian China could practise for decades. China’s political leadership could prioritise long-term national strategy over public sentiment with remarkable discipline. Bharat, by contrast, operates under constant electoral pressures. This explains why political declarations in the subcontinent often arrive before policy execution.

China’s rise was enabled by ruthless prioritisation of national growth over immediate public welfare. The very approach to nation-building is different: in China, people are seen and used as assets (at least two generations have sacrificed for the China project) to bolster Beijing’s interests. The state’s primary goal has been the rise of China; citizens’ wellbeing, though important, remains secondary.

In Delhi, it is often the other way round. The country’s democratic, dharmic culture makes such extreme prioritisation harder. Added to this are electoral compulsions that often push governments towards populism — freebies, subsidies, reservation politics, and short-term welfare measures that win elections but may weaken long-term national capacity. Here, it is not a contention that China’s authoritarian system is morally superior. But there has to be some sort of consensus on balancing populism with strategic national interest.

However, Bharat’s biggest historical setback lies in missing its early post-Independence moment. It is easier to seize opportunity at the first given chance than to recover lost ground decades later. China boarded the bus at the right time, and it maximised that opportunity. Bharat hesitated, constrained by Left-wing, Nehruvian ideology, institutional limitations and strategic miscalculations.

All this makes the coming 10 years a make-or-break moment for Delhi. It will decide whether it rises or gets permanently boxed in between Washington’s conditional friendship and Beijing’s open hostility. The country will have to learn to simultaneously manage China’s hostility and America’s strategic ambiguity. Washington’s policies under Trump 2.0 have made this even clearer.

Take the case of Chabahar Port, for instance. Bharat’s investment in Chabahar was not merely an infrastructure project. It was, as Washington-based energy expert Umud Shokri recently wrote in a Firstpost article, a geopolitical counterweight to China’s Gwadar Port project and the broader Belt and Road Initiative strategy in the region. “Any reduction in India’s role creates space for other actors, most notably China,” Shokri noted. And any increase in Chinese influence in the Middle East would only hurt American interests in the long term

This is classic Trumpian diplomacy: try to hurt China and punish Iran, but somehow end up cornering Bharat instead. Not for no reason once Henry Kissinger prophetically said: “It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal.”

For Delhi, the lesson is stark. It must prepare for a world where it stands largely alone. What is comforting is that Delhi has already realised this and is renegotiating newer regional alliances and FTAs. This will give Delhi options beyond the American-Chinese duopoly, though it is not the contention of the author to put Indo-American ties into cold storage. In fact, this is the moment for Indian diplomacy to become more aggressive in wooing the Americans and making them realise that their interests are aligned, though Delhi should simultaneously have a dependable backup plan.

The path for a rising nation has never been free of peril. For Delhi, however, the challenge becomes greater because it must rise while navigating between two giants — one openly hostile, the other conditionally supportive. But if Bharat succeeds, it will not merely secure national power. It will also help shape a world order that remains plural, democratic and resistant to hegemonic tendencies.

The Xi-Trump tango must wake Bharat up and make it smell the new geopolitical reality.

(Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.)