China courts India: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the United States on Wednesday, becoming one of the first few foreign leaders to visit Washington since President Trump took office. As India consolidates its ties with the United States, China is also trying to improve its relations with India. Experts believe that China's overtures to India, partly due to its growing concerns about the strengthening of U.S.-India relations, are part of a broader strategy to maintain regional balance, especially as Beijing expects its tensions with Washington to persist under the new Trump administration.

US, Indian leaders both emphasize deepening partnership

"This visit will be an opportunity to build on the gains of our cooperation during his (President Trump's) first term and set an agenda to further elevate and deepen our partnership, including in the areas of technology, trade, defense, energy, and supply chain resilience," Modi said in a statement on the eve of his visit to the United States.

Indian government officials said Modi was ready to make additional tariff cuts to avoid a trade war with the U.S.

Trump said after a phone call with Modi that they discussed "expanding and deepening cooperation" during the call and reaffirmed their commitment to the strategic relationship and the Quad partnership consisting of the United States, Japan, Australia and India.

China, India seek to improve relations

Modi's visit to the United States comes shortly after India's top career diplomat, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri, met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Beijing. The two countries signed an agreement to "stabilize and rebuild relations," including resuming direct flights and pilgrimages by Indian pilgrims to a holy site in Tibet, as well as strengthening people-to-people exchanges.

The visit is part of a recent series of engagements between the two neighbors, which eased five years of tensions following a border agreement reached in October last year. The move

by the Modi government, which has just taken a people-to-people exchange-centric approach, comes as China has also launched a months-long unilateral public diplomacy campaign, starting in 2024, aimed at improving its image in India, where skepticism about China is widespread.

China launches charm offensive against India

China's strategy involves a series of trips to China organized by the Chinese government for Indian scholars, journalists and social media influencers, as well as an online charm offensive led by Xu Feihong, China's ambassador to India.

Last October, Zain Anwar, an Indian online content creator with more than 200,000 followers on YouTube and Instagram, was invited by the Chinese Embassy in New Delhi to be part of a delegation of Indian journalists to China in November.

After joining the delegation in Shanghai, he was received by the local government and visited popular tourist spots. They then traveled to Shenzhen and visited the main attractions there. After

the tour, Anwar posted a video of his trip on YouTube, highlighting various cultural aspects of life in China.

"My video is not entirely political. Therefore, it has received good reviews. But of course, my entire trip has received a lot of questions," he said. He mentioned the negative views of Indians towards China.

According to a recent Pew Research Center survey, India is one of the very few developing countries with highly negative attitudes towards China, with more than half of respondents having a negative view of China.

In the past few years, the Chinese government has both sponsored and sometimes amplified China-friendly content from many foreign bloggers, although the inclusion of Indian content creators is a fairly new phenomenon.

Anwar declared that while the Chinese government may have "an agenda behind it," it is "unfair to assume that Indians will actually convey their agenda."

“Just because we are given a short trip to China, it doesn’t mean we are actually going to be their mouthpiece or deliver their propaganda,” he added.

Is China re-activating its "soft power" diplomacy?

Donald Heflin, the U.S. chargé d'affaires in New Delhi in 2021 and a senior fellow at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, believes that Beijing's strategy is part of its global push to "exert soft power influence."

"China has done this before in Africa and elsewhere, sending people to China for short visits through delegations or study tours, hosting them well during their trip, letting them see China, and letting them go back with a good impression and positive attitude towards China," he said.

In addition to hosting content creators and journalists, Beijing has also strengthened its track-two diplomatic efforts by inviting Indian scholars and researchers to visit China.

Ashok Kantha, who served as India's ambassador to China from 2014 to 2016, attended a "China-India Civilization Dialogue" conference hosted by the Central Party School of the Communist Party of China in July. He welcomed China's efforts and called such meetings "useful."

"They have their own positions, which are sometimes very different from ours. But it is useful to open these channels of communication," he told VOA.

Saheli Chattaraj, an assistant professor at Mumbai's Somaiya University who attended the same event, supports such exchanges.

"The Chinese side is interested in moving things forward and focusing on promoting understanding," she told VOA.

India-China relations have deteriorated sharply since a clash in the Kalwan Valley in the Himalayas in June 2020 that left 20 Indian soldiers and at least four Chinese soldiers dead.

In retaliation, India banned more than 40 Chinese apps, including TikTok. Both sides also deployed thousands of troops along the 2,100-mile border, equipped them with heavy weapons and reinforced their positions. The two sides have been locked in a tense standoff for more than four years.

Cross-border travel, which was curbed by the coronavirus pandemic, did not resume even after the restrictions ended. In June 2023, the two countries also drove away each other's journalists in a tit-for-tat move.

According to former ambassador Ashok Kantha, things began to change in 2024 as China's "charm offensive began to wash ashore."

China appointed Ambassador Xu Feihong in May 2024 after the post was

vacant for 18 months. Since then, he has sought to soften China's image and has launched one of the largest foreign propaganda campaigns in India.

His messages on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, offer a glimpse into this new public diplomacy offensive. Last August, he posted a three-minute long video in which a Chinese diplomat spoke in fluent Hindi about her childhood experience living in India. He

regularly visits historical sites, praises India's infrastructure, and promotes positive messages about bilateral relations.

According to the "100-day record of Chinese Ambassador to India Xu Feihong" published on the Chinese Embassy's website, in his first 100 days in India, he "posted more than 150 X posts with more than 2.5 million views, and worked hard to enhance the understanding and cognition of the people of the two countries."

In the statement, the Chinese Embassy said it would "spare no effort to work with people from all walks of life to promote the improvement and development of China-India relations."

Former Indian official: India will not "fall for influence operations"

Kanta, a former Indian ambassador to China, said the current Chinese envoy was "more active".

"He has reached out to us. He has met with us,"

he said, adding, however, that the efforts showed that the Chinese government was "keen to show how far relations have normalized".

"We still do not accept that relations are back on track because there is an unfinished border agenda and peace and tranquility there still needs to be addressed," he said.

He added that despite China's overtures to India, India is not a country that "will fall for influence operations."

"They have done it successfully in some other countries, but hopefully we are in a different category," the former ambassador said.

Earlier this month, Indian Army Chief General Upendra Dwivedi announced that the country was "not expecting any reduction in troop presence" during the current winter. He also revealed that India and China are still in "some degree of standoff" and called the border situation "stable but sensitive."

US and India strengthen ties

As India-China relations go through a period of uncertainty, US-India relations are thriving. New Delhi has emerged as a key partner in Washington's Indo-Pacific strategy.

India has shed its traditional reluctance and played an important role in strengthening the Quad dialogue, which consists of four democratic countries: the United States, Japan, Australia and India, in 2021. During the previous Biden administration, the two sides signed several agreements covering defense, emerging technologies and supply chain diversification. The

new Trump administration has vowed to maintain continuity in relations with India. Before Trump's call with Modi, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio held his first bilateral meeting with Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar shortly after taking office. The meeting was followed by a meeting of Quad foreign ministers. The group vowed to uphold the principles of a free and open Indo-Pacific and strengthen regional security.

Kanta, a former Indian ambassador to China, believes that the Quad partnership will continue to feature prominently between US and India.

“In the second term of the Trump administration, especially on the issue of the Quad partnership, we do not expect any diminution in its prominence. You remember that it was during the first Trump administration, in 2017, that the Quad partnership was revived.”

The US, India and China are wrestling in a triangular struggle

In the view of the former ambassador to China, this will make Beijing uneasy and suspicion between China and India will continue.

“They (the Chinese) have been saying, look here, you are too close to the United States,” Ambassador Kanta said. “We tell them that your trade with the United States is many times greater than our trade with the United States, and we don’t see the Quad very much as a security arrangement. We are suspicious of each other’s strategic intentions, and that will continue to complicate the situation.”

Observers believe that this triangular struggle between the United States, China and India is inevitable.

"I personally think the Chinese are definitely concerned about the U.S. and India developing closer ties. It's certainly a concern for China, but at the same time, I think China is also very concerned about its own relationship with the U.S.," said Shaheli Shaheed, an assistant professor at Mumbai's Somaiya University. VOA/SP