Xi Jinping is visiting New Delhi this weekend for a summit of the BRICS nations, delivering the strongest sign yet of a thaw between China and India six years after a deadly clash on their mountainous border sent relations between the two nuclear-armed neighbors into a deep freeze. Behind the tentative steps by Xi and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, analysts say, is uncertainty in each country’s own relationship with the United States.

Both China and India have been particular targets of President Trump’s tariffs. India’s ties with the U.S. have deteriorated sharply during Trump’s second term over matters that included rancor over India’s purchases of Russian oil, a reversal after years of growing closeness that stemmed in large part from their mutual interest in countering China.

“India is trying to readjust,” Srikanth Kondapalli, a professor of Chinese studies at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, told The Wall Street Journal.

One of the clearest signs of the re-evaluation came last year, when Modi traveled to China for the first time in seven years for a regional forum. There, Modi, Xi and Russian leader Vladimir Putin pledged mutual cooperation. Trump posted in response that the U.S. had “lost India…to deepest, darkest China.”

The rivalry between India and China, the world’s largest democracy and largest authoritarian state, dates to the founding of their modern nations in the 1940s. They went to war in 1962 and have had several border standoffs since, with troops on both sides killed in a 2020 clash. Signs of warming began with a breakthrough in border talks on the eve of the 2024 U.S. election that returned Trump to office, according to Kondapalli.

For China, better ties improve stability on a border that touches two regions where Beijing has long struggled to assert full control — Tibet and Xinjiang. The thaw could also ease concerns in Beijing that India will align with U.S. partners and allies to contain China, allowing Beijing to focus on what the Chinese leadership sees as its primary rivalry with the United States. Xi is scheduled to meet Trump later this month, and the BRICS summit notably includes Russia and Iran among its members.

The prospect of improved ties is undercut by the possibility that New Delhi could shift its alignment closer to the U.S. again after Trump leaves office, Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center, told the Journal.

“The Chinese are also seeing that India is biding its time, just working for better options that might emerge,” she said. “So I think that adds to the superficiality of the current improvement of China-India relations.”

There are signs that the world’s two most populous nations, which also compete to represent the interests of developing economies, are trying to take cautious economic steps forward. A vast Chinese trade surplus — $116 billion last year, according to Chinese figures — has highlighted India’s dependency on its northern neighbor for goods and inputs for its own manufacturing and pharmaceutical industries.

After the 2020 conflict, India banned dozens of Chinese apps, including video platform TikTok, which until then had counted India as its biggest success story outside China. New Delhi also made it impossible for Chinese firms to invest in India and increased regulatory scrutiny of Chinese firms already operating in the country.

Some Indian officials have argued that the country needs to find a way to work with the world’s largest manufacturer if it wants to boost Indian manufacturing, and that allowing the cautious resumption of more investment from China could help bring critical technology and know-how to India. Among other changes, India has said it would make it easier for Chinese entities to take minority stakes in sectors such as electronics manufacturing and solar power — a way to encourage joint ventures with Indian firms.

Political experts are doubtful that China is eager to enable India to achieve greater economic heft. India remains a largely untapped market for Chinese consumer goods, and China will be looking at more market access there as part of an improved relationship, including for its electric vehicles.

There is room for the countries to do more on the trade front and increase bilateral encounters, given that the leaders of both countries “are enjoying great power at home,” Fei-Ling Wang, a professor of international relations at the Georgia Institute of Technology who focuses on China studies, told the Journal. But he said the repairs are largely cosmetic and will not alter the fundamental nature of their relationship, especially given their disputed border, China’s deep relationship with India’s enemy Pakistan, and security competition in the Indian Ocean.

“Given their geostrategic conflicts, their overall competitive nature of the two economies, and their incompatibility of the political systems and ideologies, India and China are almost destined to be more rivals than partners, let alone friends or allies,” Wang said.