Trump-Xi meeting reshapes global power balance and lessons for India

Last week's visit to China by US President Donald Trump and his talks with his Chinese President Xi Jingping has sparked worldwide conversations about the equilibrium in ties between the top two powers and its implications for other countries.

The questions being debated are: will the competition between the two countries make a conflict inevitable? Is it a temporary truce? If so, how long will it last? Because divergences from trade to Taiwan, which have strained US-China relations and created tensions, remai, unresolved.

The general perception among Indian geostrategic analysts is that Trump went to China as a weakened superpower made by the ill-judged war on Iran, which has put the US in second place in the Gulf.

The energy supply disruption caused by the war has cast a shadow over India's economic stability. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's recent repeated calls for a halt to buying gold, unnecessary foreign travel and save foreign exchanges exposed India's vulnerability.

After the Trump visit to China, that seems to have been averted. The visit was less about confrontation and more about managing the relations with give and take in their respective areas of interest in order to maintain, in the words of Xi, "strategic stability." To cement this stability, Xi will undertake a visit to the US in September when the two leaders will meet again.

So has this created a new model of relations for middle powers and emerging economies like India which need to navigate the pitfalls of Sino-US rivalry. India too is scheduled to host the BRICS summit in September when, according to a report in The Indian Express, both Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin are likely to be present.

There are three key takeaways for India from the Trump-X meeting. First, the era of the US acting as a dependable ally in building a bulwark against China is over at least under the Trump dispensation. Secondly, India will have to push for strategic autonomy much further by building stronger domestic capabilities and diversifying partnerships, including maintaining working ties with Beijing and Moscow.

Xi dealt with Trump as his equal by denting the latter's assumption that it could pressurize China through tariffs, sanctions and technology denial. China has built the world's largest navy, expanded its nuclear arsenal, narrowed the technological gap in Artificial Intelligence, advanced manufacturing, robotics and quantum computing.

In several strategic sectors like batteries, drones, rare earth processing and green technologies, China has an edge. The tariff war Trump had set off in 2025 have failed to dent China's standing as the world's manufacturing hub, including for hi-tech products, with the curbs on the sale of high-end AI chips pushing Beijing to emphasise self-reliance. Herein lies the second takeaway for India which needs to further strengthen its economy and modernise the military. That is why one frequently hears Indian ruling party leaders talking about self-reliance.

Third, the Quad, which seems to be running out of steam under Trump's world view, can no longer remain the centrepiece of India's strategy in the Indo-Pacific region at a time when the US, the prime driver of the four-nation grouping, is treating China almost like an equal peer. New Delhi should stop expecting the US to intervene in the event of a standoff with Beijing.

On the other hand, India must fortify its ties with BRICS, Japan, Australia, South Korea, European Union, and ASEAN to help cement its regional outreach and at the same time manage stable ties with the US.

Fourthly, standing up to US pressure while managing difficult ties with an increasingly militarily and economically assertive China will be a crucial determinant of New Delhi's strategic diplomacy in the years to come.