From Tianjin in China, where the SCO Summit is being held, came a rather unusual image: Prime Minister Narendra Modi being warmly welcomed by Chinese President Xi Jinping. Shaking Modi’s hands, Xi said: “A cooperative ‘pas de deux’ of the dragon and the elephant should be the right choice for the two countries.”
The sight came as a rude awakening to Western analysts who had watched India thawing toward its arch-foe China. Though they appreciated a warmer relationship between the countries in general terms, they believe it shouldn’t come at the expense of the West.
The West puts the blame squarely on one person: US President Donald Trump.
UK-based newspaper ‘The Times’ hit out at Trump for pushing India towards China. It argued that India had pursued a policy of non-alignment since its inception, but its cultural sympathies leaned towards the West. The US had lavished attention on the nascent superpower in a bid to recruit India into an alliance aimed at containing China. “But it has taken Donald Trump only a few months to sabotage this diplomatic groundwork,” The Times editorial added.
#WATCH | Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and other Heads of States/Heads of Governments pose for a group photograph at the Shanghai Cooperation Council (SCO) Summit in Tianjin, China.
— ANI (@ANI) September 1, 2025
(Source: DD News) pic.twitter.com/UftzXy6g3K
Mark Almond, director of Oxford-based Crisis Research Institute, believes “Trump is the reason India’s mingling with despots and pariahs”. Almond warns that the sight of Modi glad-handing Xi will set alarm bells ringing across the West. “And if the Indian Elephant does indeed join the Chinese Dragon – and its partner in crime the Russian Bear – in an alliance against the American-led West, we would be wise to drop any complacency about our global strategic position,” Almond writes in the Daily Mail.
While the sight of Xi and Putin together was expected, the presence of India’s democratically elected Prime Minister is the “most sinister development”, Almond argues, adding that the West can hope that India’s decision to attend this convention of despots and pariahs is only tactical.
Calling it a geopolitical earthquake, Almond blames it on Trump’s treatment of India, stating, “wounded pride and despots’ cynical power plays are bringing India, China and Russia together.”
An analyst with the New York Times also expressed his shock at seeing the sight. In a piece that appeared in a US newspaper, the reporter who was in Tianjin explains “how geopolitics was at play in a way that we haven’t seen in a very long time” at the Summit.
He added that Modi was signaling to the US that he had options and there were consequences for the chaotic foreign policy that’s coming out of Washington. “China has summoned the non-Western-aligned world to this event to tell Washington: 'You are no longer calling the shots,” he added.
