The China-Russia-India Troika in 2025: The View from China

The China-Russia-India Troika in 2025: The View from China
Gilbert Rozman

Russia and India are the two biggest challenges, apart from the United States, to forging a Sinocentric region across most of Asia. Beijing’s approach to these two great powers—one receding from its superpower heritage as the Soviet Union and the other emerging from its marginality to become the likely third or fourth global power by the mid-twentieth century—has been strikingly different. Those differences can be traced through bilateral analysis, while examination of the China-Russia-India triangle promises additional insights. Chinese publications closely explore the triangular dimension as well as the three bilateral legs, notably Russia-India relations.¹

It is not difficult to discern China’s overall strategy for Sinocentrism, incorporating the United States into the picture. As for the Grand Strategic Triangle, critical in the 1970s–80s and revived to some degree in the 2000s and 2010s, China’s approach has been to separate the US and Russia as much as possible, to draw Russia ever closer to China, and to keep Sino-US relations from deteriorating rapidly as the balance of power between the two continues to narrow. India poses different challenges than Russia under Vladimir Putin, who has prioritized rebuilding Moscow’s hold over parts of Europe that grasped for support in the West for their full-fledged sovereignty. Under Narendra Modi, India is assessed as having unrelenting ambitions to assert itself as a top-tier power, aspiring to influence across Asia’s southern tier, one area where China intends to carve out a Sinocentric sphere.²

As over the past two-thirds of a century since Mao Zedong reasserted Sinocentrism as a major goal, India looms more as a rival unamenable to China’s aspirations than a great power target subject to balancing maneuvers. Indeed, in the 1960s and 1970s, a close Soviet-Indian bond proved to be a major irritant fueling the Sino-Soviet split and leaving little thought of overtures to either state. In opting for neutrality in the burgeoning clash of the other two, along with other moves, Moscow demonstrated its rejection of Sinocentrism. Coupled with the rift over ideology and the struggle for leadership of the Communist bloc, Soviet rejection of a Chinese sphere of influence and territorial expansion damned their alliance.³ In the 1980s China demanded a Soviet retreat—to the south in Southeast Asia, to the north centered in Mongolia, and to the west in Afghanistan. If India was not on China’s list of obstacles to normalization, despite relying on Soviet arms support, that did not mean rebooting Sino-Indian relations would not prove difficult after realizing normalization with Moscow from 1989 into 1992.

China humored Russia for three decades that together they could lead in reshaping the geopolitical and, to a degree, geo-economic and infrastructure architecture of Eurasia. They jointly founded the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) to manage different agendas in Central Asia. In the Six-Party Talks and again a decade later in 2017–18, they papered over a divergence on North Korean policy to avoid a conflict in Northeast Asia, which also required Russia to redefine its “Turn to the East” around 2016 to avoid tensions over Japan and South Korea. Nevertheless, as the asymmetry between Beijing and Moscow widened, Beijing felt emboldened to set aside its caution in deferring to Moscow, once the priority for strengthening it to balance Washington in the triangle that mattered most. Sufficiently powerful relative to the perceived declining sole superpower, and quite reassured that Putin, for the foreseeable future, was irrevocably on a collision course with the US, a more assertive Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, from 2013 could defy Russian concerns in intensifying a barely disguised Sinocentric agenda.

Xi kept the façade of coordination with Putin as he tested a succession of unilateral moves, to some of which Putin acquiesced. Having been blocked in the SCO from measures aimed at integrating China with Central Asia in economics and infrastructure, Xi struck out on his own in 2013 with the Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB). Putin soon agreed to a face-saving plan to “dock” China’s plans there with his own Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). In response to Xi’s 2014 declaration of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), inclusive of the SREB but now sweeping across maritime Asia too, Putin was obliged to accept Chinese lip service to his own wide-ranging but only barely substantive “Greater Eurasian Partnership” (GEP), as if the two leaders were still jointly reshaping the Eurasian architecture. In 2017, Putin yielded on North Korea, too, as Xi agreed to tough sanctions, both in anticipation of a possible deal with Donald Trump and as a slap in the face for Kim Jong-un, who was defiant of Xi as he somewhat cozied up to Putin. A test regarding divergence in India awaited as the decade of the 2010s was concluding.

The 2020 border clash between China and India, the 2021 Biden administration Indo-Pacific framework, the 2022 start of full Russian aggression in Ukraine, and the 2025 “Trump shock wave” (as the Chinese call it) all tested the China-Russia-India triangle beyond anything seen in previous decades. From the Chinese perspective, India’s position in the triangle was strengthening as Russia’s was weakening. No immediate, major reconfiguration of the triangle was occurring, but some significant changes were underway. The Sino-Russian leg was strengthening, the Sino-Indian leg was still troubled after weakening in 2020–21, and the Indo-Russian leg was proving to be the one to watch most carefully. This bilateral nexus could not escape the shadow of three far more consequential bilateral relationships: Sino-US ties, Indo-US ties, and Sino-Russian ties—all drawing much more attentive scrutiny.

In August 2025, China-India relations were on a bit of an upswing. India was targeted by Trump and intent on showing it had other options. China was keen on countering Trump’s possible containment tactics with more room for expanding its economic partnerships. The uncertainty of the moment left China more inclined to welcome India-Russia cooperation as a necessary accommodation to the ongoing flux in great power relations. The Trump “shock wave,” as viewed from China, presented an opportunity to bolster ties with India and, perhaps, to build on Trump’s concessions to Putin to secure a bilateral Sino-US agreement rather than new containment.

At the end of August, two images of India’s new position in great power relations came into view. An article in The New York Times pointed to Trump’s egomania as the cause of the rupture in US-India relations, as reflected in his phone conversation with Modi on June 17.⁴ Whereas he claimed that his intervention had resolved the skirmish between India and Pakistan—and even their longstanding tensions—to the point he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize, Pakistan flattered him with its agreement, while Modi did not. After all, this claim contradicted a basic premise of India’s autonomous foreign policy and challenged Modi’s own stature. Such narcissistic insensitivity by Trump would never have withstood the scrutiny of US foreign policy experts, but of course, they do not matter in his decision-making. On August 31-September 1, Modi met with Xi and Putin in Tianjin for the SCO summit. What an opportunity to take advantage of the fruits of Trump’s ineptness. While there was talk that the extreme scale of US sanctions against India was largely due to Indian purchases of Russian oil, the fact that China was not similarly sanctioned disproved that explanation.

Chinese analysis puts the China-India-Russia triangle in historical context, paying close attention to the India-Russia relationship as critical to triangular dynamics. Apart from the triangle, most relevant is coverage of US ties to India, since Sino-US ties and Sino-Russian ties are intensely examined in different frameworks. Narendra Modi’s upsurge in Indian nationalism, Joseph Biden’s Indo-Pacific strategy, and lately Donald Trump’s “shock wave” figure importantly in the Chinese outlook on the forces impacting the China-India-Russia triangle. The context had appeared strikingly different prior to Modi’s “Act East Policy,” Xi’s BRI, and Putin’s “Turn to the East.”

Historical Background

India was not treated as a great power by China through the end of the 20th century. That Nikita Khrushchev targeted it as Soviet foreign policy shifted to a contest for the Third World with the United States contradicted the revolutionary and expansionist strategy of Mao Zedong. Through the 1980s, India was mainly an afterthought in the management of great power relations, premised on China’s logic that the Sino-Soviet contradiction is greater than the Sino-US one, and the US-Soviet one is greatest of all. Thus, Beijing could take the strategic initiative to impact mutual triangular relations, eventually becoming the pivot in the Grand Strategic Triangle after Moscow awakened to its deteriorating position. Moscow would then have to yield on regional issues, leaving its relationship with New Delhi much more vulnerable, although that was not the priority for China’s leadership.

The collapse of the Soviet Union impacted India as well as the Grand Strategic Triangle. The US-Russian contradiction was now a secondary matter; the Sino-US contradiction was primary, and the Sino-Russian one lost its salience in Chinese thinking. As Indo-Russian ties abruptly attenuated, China had little need to take the triangle with them into account. Its priority was to help Russia revive its power to breathe new life into the China-US-Russia strategic triangle, best facilitated by China’s rapid rise in comprehensive national power. Indeed, as US interest in India grew more apparent in the 2000s–2010s, China welcomed sustained Indo-Russian strategic ties as a counter to advancing Indo-US cooperation. The priority in the China-Russia-India troika was to solidify Sino-Russian ties, while Indo-Russian relations gradually weakened as the third leg of this triangle. In the Chinese chronology, ties with Moscow deepened in 2011–2014, 2017–2019, and again in 2022–2023, making it easier to set aside concern for Russia trying to use its far less meaningful ties to India in some sort of balancing strategy.

The early years of Putin’s “Turn to the East” and Modi’s “Act East Policy” left some uncertainty in Xi Jinping’s Sinocentric agenda. Sino-Russian relations advanced with redirection from Europe to Asia, then with the expected alienation of Russia from the West due to its aggression in Ukraine in 2014, and again from Putin souring on US allies in Northeast Asia by 2017. But while Putin was eager to boost ties with India, coordination on regional policy remained a work in progress.⁵ Meanwhile, ups and downs in Sino-Indian relations failed to clarify how powerful the economic impulse would be in boosting relations and how serious geopolitical differences would become.

The state of the China-Russia-India triangle by 2020 gave China an opening to be more aggressive toward India. If Moscow still considered bilateral ties to India quite strong and desired Beijing to pursue closer ties with New Delhi, Beijing had no interest in that. The China-Russia leg was recognized as strong, the Russia-India leg was treated as weakening, and the China-India leg appeared mixed, with room for China to press harder. There was little reason for concern about the Russia-India connection if China-India ties faced new challenges.⁶ By aggressive action on the Sino-Indian border in 2020, China transformed the triangle, leaving Russia in a quandary.

During the Cold War, there were three bases of India-USSR relations: security, mainly through arms exports; economics, seen in Soviet support for heavy industry; and the geopolitical impact of US-Pakistan ties and, later, China too versus the Soviet Union. All of these have attenuated. Russia’s economic significance for India has dropped, especially as markets and India’s economic model changed, leaving mainly arms and oil from Russia. Coal exports from Russia and pharmaceuticals from India were tops in 2020. Russia-China trade and US-India trade and investment dwarf Russia-India trade and investment. As for hard security, US and European arms exports pose fierce competition, as India diversifies its suppliers and becomes more self-sufficient. As Russia’s battlefield advances in Ukraine had not gone as expected, India’s trust in Russian weapons declined, and Russian industry had trouble satisfying Russia’s needs, impacting exports to India.

In geopolitics, the importance of Russia has also fallen, as US-Pakistan ties deteriorated, especially during Trump’s first term. One author views India-Russia ties as shifting from a quasi-alliance (even after the Cold War, there was a “special and privileged strategic partnership”) to pragmatic cooperation. Although India has not followed the Western lead on sanctions and has bolstered energy relations, ties to Russia have been marked by discord and instability, readers are told. Strategic ties to Russia were largely about continental security, to the US for maritime security, with Russia’s role persisting despite limited alienation of ties. They have shared interests in Central Asia and both seek a multipolar world, but ties have become less settled. India is the limiting factor in US-Indian relations, keeping some distance for its great power aspirations. The US “Indo-Pacific strategy” prioritizes India versus China, leaving Russia aside, as Russia-Pakistan ties strengthen in response. Meanwhile, Sino-Indian relations, due to the border question and India’s welcome to the “Indo-Pacific strategy” have faced obstacles, while Sino-Russian ties drew closer. All this impacted India-Russia relations, revealing a departure from their historical connection.

Worsening Sino-Indian relations impact Indo-Russian ties too, but Chinese analysts are hesitant to cover this. Modi seeks to be the leader of the Third World while also joining with Japan and others in the Indo-Pacific for great power status, Chinese assert as an explanation, adding that at present, Russia still has important strategic value for India, but what is missing is mutual strategic trust as an enduring foundation for the triangular framework with China.⁷

The Balance of Power between Russia and India

Already in the 1960s, India sought to be the third great power along with the US and the Soviet Union, and in 2014, Modi reasserted that goal—to be a leading global power, not a balancer.⁸ Modi boosted ties with Russia with this aim in mind, including seeking support to become a permanent member of the Security Council. Modi seeks a multipolar world, seeing Russia as a partner. He also views the Indo-Pacific as vital to his goal, including the Russian Far East as a regional interest. Thus, India seeks a balance among China, the US, and Russia. From the time of Putin’s visit to India in 2000, relations qualitatively improved. India values this. In Central Asia, they have shared interests, especially in security. For India, this includes containing China there. Modi also seeks Russian cooperation in the Indian Ocean, India’s backyard. Russia offers India access to the Arctic with value in acquiring natural gas and oil. Thus, in the Central Asian, Indian Ocean, and Arctic regions, Modi saw geopolitical and economic reasons for cooperation. Among great powers, Modi prioritized the US and Russia, but compared to earlier leaders, ties to Russia were less important, and over time, they lost some of their appeal. The Chinese recognize this,⁹ but are obliged to downplay how much China’s foreign policy has provoked India’s evolving reassessment.

Since late in Modi’s first term, divisions between India and Russia began to widen, especially over “Indo-Pacific” questions, even as more economic cooperation was sought, Chinese report. The arms trade is the centerpiece of the relationship. In 2014–2018, 27% of Russia’s arms exports and 57% of India’s arms imports were involved, but a downward trend was seen after some big purchases were made and joint development had commenced. India’s dependence on Russian armaments has gradually diminished. Overall, trade and investment, apart from energy, are the weak link in relations. India imports far more than it exports. This is an unbalanced economic relationship with implications for geopolitics as well. India’s external geopolitical environment improved after the Cold War, becoming a pivot in great power competition, while Russia’s need for India rose. The relationship thus was changing, as Russia’s value continued to recede, and it could weaken much further, Chinese authors recognize, warning that Russia must recognize the fact that it could gradually lose out as a vital partner for India.¹⁰

Agreement on a multipolar world and democratization of international relations meant considerable overlap after the Cold War, with no big clash of interests. Milestones were reached in Russia-India bilateral ties in 2000, 2010, 2017, and 2019, and India weathered external criticism for its neutral response to Russia’s 2014 role in Crimea. In 2022, it also refused to join the Western camp and rejected simplifications that “Russia invaded Ukraine,” given the historical background and NATO expansion to the east, insists a Chinese author. India kept importing the S-400 air defense system and bought lots of oil. Yet, India-Russia relations already had some discordant elements and conflicts of interest, as India was increasingly defining the terms of the relationship. On the Russia-Ukraine clash, there was implicit criticism of Russia, as at the September 2022 SCO meeting, when Modi said this was not a time of war and expressed regrets in a call with Zelenskiy, while separately opposing the use of nuclear weapons there. India ignored Russian views of the “Indo-Pacific strategy” as containment of China and Russia and as a sign of “Cold War thinking,” which divides the region. The balance in the Russia-India relationship has kept shifting in India’s favor, readers are repeatedly informed.¹¹

When Putin visited India in 2021, he and Modi strove to narrow their differences. India welcomed Russia’s neutrality on Sino-Indian tensions. Yet bilateral ties were clearly loosening. Russia’s strategic value was falling. The turnabout in relative power with Russia impacted dependency ties, as did India’s unprecedented position in great power competition. With the US relatively weakened, China, still behind the US in the short run, and Russia in decline, India is sought by all and has less need of Russia. India is in the driver’s seat, as Russia’s fragility has become clear. With Russia’s international influence receding, this triangle has become more limited for India, weakening the Indo-Russian link. The rise in India’s comprehensive national power leads it to assume an unprecedented international position, but it is also caught in an extreme nationalist trap due to its strategic culture. Relations are heading toward alienation, but due to India’s insistence on multilateral autonomy, it also needs Russia. Key to understanding the situation is India’s thirst to be a great power, readers are told. In bilateral ties, India has more leverage and initiative. Common interests have narrowed, as in economic ties, arms exports have faced more intense competition, and the great power framework has grown more complex and unbalanced. Three features noted are: a suspension of annual bilateral summits as some political differences surfaced; a gradual weakening of defense and security cooperation; and a continuing dearth of deep economic ties, even as cooperation deepened. Yet driving factors are said to remain: the need for Russia’s support for India’s great power dream; traditional ties leading to deepening relations; and common geopolitical and economic interests.¹²

One source focused on the dependency between India and Russia generated by arms sales. Calling this heavy dependency, the source sees it reinforced by proactive lock-in tactics successfully employed by Russia. While this has served to consolidate bilateral relations, it has also undermined India’s strategic flexibility. The Chinese point to a more competitive arms export market, recent friction in their arms trade, and increasing US-India military ties as causes of some instability in this pattern of dependency. India has a record of silence about Russian military operations: Afghanistan, Syria, Crimea, and since 2022, the wider Ukraine crisis. This relates to its dependence on Russia for approximately 70% of its arms imports, with 63% in 2011–2020 and 75% in 2001–2010. Russia’s power falls short for maintaining arms supplies abroad, but it is difficult for India to switch, given it has no choice but to continue its reliance at present. Russian arms are losing international competitiveness, and Russia’s transaction process has problems with delays and price rises, while its methods often aim to increase dependency. Quality problems arise. Some contradictions impact India-Russia arms trade: delays causing big increases in prices; Russian attitudes and expertise issues; and Indian dissatisfaction with limits on technology transfers. India has been boosting arms imports from the US, France, and Israel. US export controls also impact Russian arms.¹³

Another article compared India’s arms procurements from Russia and the United States, reflecting its adherence as a swing state to strategic autonomy. India has responded to the Russia-Ukraine conflict as a neutral state to preserve its autonomy. In the short term, India is seen as not changing its reliance on Russian arms even as it deepens military cooperation with the United States, resulting in some tensions. Facing the policies of both, India will react to the international setting and its own interests. It purchased Russia’s S-400 despite US objections and did not vote with the US on the Russia-Ukraine conflict, given its heavy reliance on Russian weapons. In the near future, India will maintain close arms ties with Russia and increase its weapons purchases from the US, which will impact its foreign policy, but not significantly alter it, as India is not a small power. The reason why India refuses to follow the West is not Russian arms dependence but its national interests and overall foreign strategy. It seeks a balance between the two sides. For Russia, India serves as a steady anchor in its Third World policy and a core market for arms sales. US arms sales are for the “Indo-Pacific” region and containment of China, and to reduce dependency on Russia, reasons for deepening arms cooperation. India has sought diversification from too much dependence on Russian arms and avoidance of being too close to that for its own “strategic autonomy.” Playing the two off, it seeks to boost high-tech domestic production. India is indispensable for the US, with many shared interests despite some prominent discord, readers are informed.¹⁴

Impacting the balance between Russia and India has been the US’s sharp tilt toward India in its foreign policy. In 2023 Chinese authors found a qualitative improvement in US-India relations accompanying noticeable change in ties between India and Russia.¹⁵ They noted the negative effects of the “Indo-Pacific strategy” and India continuously drawing closer to Western countries. When Modi made a state visit to Washington in mid-2023, plans were set in motion to accelerate defense cooperation, including in high-tech weapons. Given the Indian drift toward the US and Russian drift toward China, their bilateral relationship faces a contradiction and new strategic choice. India will make relations with the West the core of its foreign policy, and the US “Indo-Pacific” strategy rests on India. Ever more people see the US and Indian Indo-Pacific vision as a geopolitical continuation of the Cold War, containing Russia as well as China, while some Western states even see Russia’s strategy of inclusion in Asia as a “turn to China strategy.” The US “Indo-Pacific strategy” prioritizes India versus China, leaving Russia aside, as Russia-Pakistan ties strengthen in response.

Meanwhile, Sino-Indian relations, due to the border question and India’s welcoming of the “Indo-Pacific strategy,” have faced obstacles, while Sino-Russian ties drew closer. India is the only country in both the Quad and the China-Russia-India cooperation system, and two separate strategic directions, but declining India-Russia ties threaten this equilibrium. Internationally and regionally, India seeks multipolarity. The China-Russia-India grouping serves the former; the Quad serves the latter, which is foremost. One article highlights the 2023 Modi-Biden agreements, ranging from South Asia to East Asia, to the South Pacific to the Middle East.¹⁶ Russia’s influence in India will keep falling, but India will not abandon Russia, as seen in the Ukraine crisis. The Russia-Ukraine conflict has accelerated the realignment underway. Whether the Trump “shock” to the global system would result in some reversal of this tendency remained to be seen in the fluid environment visible in the late summer of 2025.

The Troika

One article on the critical question of how China should react to close ties between Russia and India answers with qualified approval. Both India and Russia have been rising in this century, as they have agreed to strengthen cooperation, which has had some positive effects for China, although they differ in their views on China. Security ties are a historical legacy, making geopolitics a bilateral nexus. Energy and economic ties meet future needs.

The article asks Russia to better grasp India’s strategic concerns and India to respond more positively to Russia on regional matters, while China-India ties need a breakthrough. The three need to accentuate their common agenda, advancing economic growth and social stability, while criticizing Western foreign military behavior and supporting the global standing of developing countries. All three should support BRICS, the SCO, and other multilateral international organizations. Russia should play a positive role in Sino-Indian relations, given its eagerness to push this troika model. The stress was on why India-Russia ties should downplay bilateralism for multilateralism, i.e., with China included. Alternatively, Russia may lose all strategic value for India, ties may weaken, and India may tilt fully to the West, an outcome some are discussing as they see first steps toward a US alliance. India still takes a pragmatic attitude toward cooperation with Russia, as Russia retains considerable national power and regional influence, notably in Central Asia, while serving as India’s leading source of arms. If the Ukraine war continues to expand and Russian comprehensive national power suffers a steep decline, this would not only fail to be helpful for India-Russia trust but also intensify Russia’s dependence on China.¹⁷

In 2022–2024, India rejected entreaties to join sanctions against Russia over its aggression in Ukraine, and China and India sought to stabilize relations, leading to some impressions that the China-Russia-India triangle would fulfill dreams of becoming the nucleus of a non-Western world order. Russians desperately sought this outcome, showcasing both BRICS and the SCO as the groupings for this troika to shine. Yet, the Chinese increasingly argued that the opposite was occurring. Evidence from 2022 to 2025 kept accumulating. First, they saw a new struggle over the “Global South” between China and India, compounding an irreconcilable clash between China’s BRI and India’s insistence on an Indo-Pacific strategy, embraced also by the United States and its allies. Second, in the eyes of the Chinese, even as Russia-India trade skyrocketed through oil rerouted to the Indian market, Russia-India ties were on a downward trajectory in their arms trade as well as in geopolitical orientations. Third, US policies centered on containing China and promoting economic security were snaring India away from a “win-win” relationship with China as never before. Additionally, two conflicts in 2025 left India and China further apart: the military tit-for-tat between India and Pakistan after a terrorist attack in India’s Kashmir, and the Israel-US war in Iran, which China and Russia strongly condemned. What was left of the heralded troika, Chinese readers might rightfully have asked before Trump’s behavior gave new reason to hope.

The US has shifted to viewing China as a strategic competitor, treating it and Russia that way in its “Indo-Pacific strategy.” Since 2011, China and Russia have deepened relations, doing so comprehensively in 2017 and further in 2019. With the Russia-Ukraine clash, the US and its allies have sanctioned Russia further, leading Sino-Russian ties ever closer to the form of a bilateral marriage in a strategic triangle, even if both to date oppose an anti-US alliance and seek improved ties with it. As Sino-US ties reach a stage of strategic stalemate, Russia is increasingly in the pivot, able to influence their ties. One author recognizes, however, that the US role is still critical. The logic of the triangle has changed, readers are told, combining competition and cooperation, and China must boost its role as the driving force. The US is currently the only superpower at the center of the world’s political and economic systems. It can exert its weight, as some saw occurring under Biden and, especially, of late, in Trump’s assertive foreign policies, changing the calculus.¹⁸

“Global South” and BRICS

The rise of the “Global South” as an international force is one of the important indicators of an era of great change unseen in 100 years, impacting Western leadership of the global economic and political system that long marginalized this area, Chinese argue. First, world economic trends have accelerated the “rise of the South, fall of the North.” Second, China, as an important member of the “Global South,” has played a leadership role in boosting its cohesion, for example, striving to advance South-South science and technology cooperation and the region’s self-reliance. Third, after the outbreak of the Ukraine crisis, states in the South refused to join or openly opposed Western sanctions against Russia, rapidly raising consciousness of a “Global South” political awakening.¹⁹ Clearly, the very notion of the “Global South” suits China’s hopes for a new world order and rejection of protectionism, reducing countries’ dependence on a West-centered order. China’s relationship with India is tested by the fact that India is also seen as pursuing leadership of the “Global South,” and its partnership with Russia is tested as well, since organizations established to corral parts of the “Global South” are regarded in Moscow as co-launched with it, or even with India as a decisive member. Nevertheless, Russian euphoria over BRICS as the driving force for the “Global South” and a new multilateral world order²⁰ is not often echoed in China’s more Sinocentric thinking about how it will overtake the US as the leader of the “Global South.”

India sought to use the G20 to position itself to lead the “Global South” and become a leading great power, a southwestern power, and a bridge between South and North. India is turning east to Southeast Asia as well as the Middle East. It wanted to avoid being marginalized between the US-Russia and China-US paradigms, while leveraging the US desire to contain China. Russia made this region a priority, globalizing its actions to completely break from the West after 2022 and prioritizing the South along with the East in place of the West, aiming to replace the US in Africa, where US influence was falling. Russia prizes BRICS for turning east and south. It sought to sustain its great power status and strengthen a multi-sided world, although Chinese ignores its aim to separate from China. The US seeks to make the Indo-Pacific a center of the “Global South,” using India and Japan as forces and focusing on Southeast Asian states as well as on the India-Middle East-Europe economic corridor. The US aims to sideline China, break “Global South” cohesion, and separate China strategically and ideologically (soft power) from this arena, while also fostering a division between West, East, and South. Japan counts heavily on India as well as Southeast Asia. Japan sees relations with the “Global South” as a big opportunity, seeking both to represent the West there and to express an autonomous foreign policy. It claimed that it would be more successful by eschewing ideology and regional fragmentation, offering a third way, neither the West nor China-Russia. Great powers are each looking in this new direction competitively, accelerating global fragmentation. Comparing approaches to the “Global South,” one source views China as a natural member of the “Global South,” its top economy and market, and asks how to deepen cooperation through shared identity, stress on South-South relations not divisions, acceptance of autonomy as well as common prosperity of the South, advancement of the BRI concept versus the Indo-Pacific one, and solidarity of existing supply chains with pursuit of economic growth foremost, along with pursuit of a common destiny.²¹ India is treated as an obstacle to China’s aspirations for Sinocentric advancement across an area still lacking cohesion. As changes unseen in the world for 100 years accelerate, the collective significance of the “Global South” keeps growing, Chinese insist.

Elaborating on the above points, the article explained China’s interest in South-South cohesion, not divisions. It argued that the Ukraine crisis caused great power geopolitical competition to visibly accelerate, and the “Global South’s” role as an independent political and economic force to increase, impacting change in the international order. Its strategic value grew, and great powers divided in their response. The West, led by the US, sought to split the “Global South.” Japan and other US allies aimed to “draw the South to the West” and to use India. Russia shifted its “Turn to the East” to the South, seeking to break the sanctions regime. The US sought support for sanctions on Russia, but even NATO ally Turkey, as well as the Philippines, balked. As China and other “Global South” states grew ever closer, the US was alarmed. The US seeks to make the Indo-Pacific a center of the “Global South,” using India and Japan as forces and focusing on Southeast Asian states as well as on the India-Middle East-Europe economic corridor. Clearly, India is critical to all efforts to deny China’s plans for the area.²²
In 2024, as host of the BRICS summit, Russia showcased this organization as the driving force in the “Global South” and for the establishment of a new international order.²³ Yet, at the 17th BRICS summit, held in Brazil in July 2025, the apparent irrelevance of the organization sharply contrasted with the high hopes raised by Russia a year earlier. Putin had staked his vision of a non-Western global order on assembling Xi, Modi, and other world leaders into a rival camp to Biden’s minilateral frameworks. Iran joined the group. Eurasian connectivity drew the spotlight. With Modi defying the US in his Russia policy and meeting with Xi in a sign of reduced bilateral tensions, the BRICS atmosphere reinforced Russian dreams of bipolarity in the guise of multipolarity. There was talk that BRICS was poised to serve as the “Global South’s” answer to the G7. Nine months later, the mood had shifted. Instead of Eurasian connectivity, “Global South” ascendancy was the mantra. Yet the atmosphere also reflected the impact of US unilateralism and tariff aggression in uniting the world against Trump’s bullying tactics. If there was no unifying around the troika, there was also little collective resistance against US leadership. The absence of Xi and Putin naturally led to suggestions that BRICS had lost a step, especially in the aftermath of Russian and Chinese inaction in defense of Iran weeks earlier. Along with Brazil, India was regarded as the principal obstacle to a clear anti-Western direction, and it was poised to host the next BRICS summit.

What had happened in the interval between the 2024 and 2025 BRICS summits? Trump had returned with a vengeance, with haste to overturn the existing international order. In response to the Brazil summit, he declared, “BRICS was set up to hurt us, BRICS was set up to degenerate our dollar and take our dollar, take it off as the standard.” Trump responded to the BRICS summit by threatening its participants with an additional 10 percent tariff on exports to the US, beyond the tariffs already imposed or looming for some. He warned, “Any country aligning itself with the anti-American policies of BRICS will face those duties with ‘no exceptions. If they’re a member of BRICS, they are going to have to pay a 10% tariff, just for that one thing—and they won’t be a member long.” Trump also threatened secondary sanctions on purchasers of Russian exports, drawing attention to China and India. Wary of his intemperate use of US tariff power, some leaders were cautious about giving him cause to lash out. Moreover, Modi had doubled down on his warning at the previous BRICS summit to “be careful to ensure that this organization does not acquire the image of one that is trying to replace global institutions.” The fact that Modi would be welcomed to Brazil with a state visit may have been a reason why Xi decided to skip the gathering, as he had the APEC summit in India the previous fall. Xi had also met with Lula three times in a short span and attended the 2024 G20 summit in Brazil.

Trump Effect in 2025

With Trump in office in 2025, the Russian focus shifted to three-way ties among Russia, the United States, and China. One Russian author, noting the great popularity in Russia of the Chinese book (also a Netflix show), The Three-Body Problem, suggested that it was becoming a geopolitical reality. He traced the trio’s shifting relations to the 1950s USSR-PRC closeness, the 1980s US-PRC “marriage of convenience,” and the 2020s process of Russia and China drawing closer, as the White House is now sending signals, albeit weak ones, of the possibility of a three-sun system. Neocons had driven the world back to the time of the Cold War with a Western front against Russia and an Eastern one against China, forcing Russia to strike a preventive blow in Ukraine. But now Trump has begun to seek a path to restore ties with Moscow and Beijing, although so far talk has not reached the point of spheres of responsibility, as Trump faces fierce opposition from the “deep state,” where many devalue his ideas, including the establishment of a triumvirate: the US-Russia-China.

The Russian article said this notion is not new in Russia, gaining immediacy from 2022. It seems to fit the framework to which Xi Jinping has given voice, advancing together with Russia a transformation not seen in 100 years. Xi paid his first foreign visit as leader to Moscow, followed by a proposal to Obama for a “new type of great power relations” with two world leaders, rejected by the US, including by Trump in his first term. Already, Trump had in mind a three-way variant with Russia during his earlier term. The article suggests that China is not interested, recalling how it had been treated in 1919 at Versailles and in 1944 at Yalta, and preferring multipolarity where it plays the central role without strict geopolitical blocs. Some in China are seen as not inclined to accept equality with a decaying America, and also a Russia barely realizing its “second breadth.” A triumvirate could turn into the other two versus China. If this analysis doubts that the triumvirate idea will catch on, it leaves the clear impression that this would be desirable for Russia. India is totally missing from this portrait of the world’s seemingly leading powers.²⁴

The “Trump shock wave” has global effects, accelerating global change with the eye of the storm in this triangle, and China needing to respond. Trump plans to resolve the Ukraine question, boost US-Russia ties, concentrate on the Sino-US strategic competition, and realize a strategic triangle effect, making room for two goals: internal political transformation and competition with China. However, Trump’s plans are not proceeding as smoothly as expected—on the war and normalization of ties to Russia—even as West vs. West divisions are rising. Biden carried on Trump’s China policy, and the overall direction will remain, with changes in strategy and methods to achieve comprehensive economic containment, readers are told. Improving ties to Russia is a new card in competition with China, while on this basis, holding summits with Chinese leaders to avoid relations spiraling out of control. Trump has a clear strategic logic in what is seen as a dog-eat-dog world. There will be many limiting factors: in US-Russia normalization, in splitting China and Russia, and also in disrupting Sino-US relations. Globalization has created a new context for great powers, increasing non-government actors’ impact and the role of regional groups such as China’s BRI, Russia’s EEU, and the US “Indo-Pacific strategy.” Trump’s “shock wave” is a non-traditional diplomatic force, reflecting right-wing forces and the “tech right-wing” against Wall Street, and impacting great powers. Yet, Trump as well as Biden have no intention of engaging in a great power war. There is no way the three states will cut ties to each other or discover a path to victory via pressure. They need a win-win result, unlike the Cold War era. A new logic applies, which China must identify and pursue, readers are told.

China should manage the “Trump shock wave” to stabilize the triangle, even to the point of positively managing regional hot spots,²⁵ readers are told. Trump could make that easier through direct tariffs on Indian exports as the culmination of his trade pressure tactics, or through secondary levies threatened in response to Indian purchases of Russian oil. Chinese awaited Trump’s next moves, as they debated taking the initiative too.

The Alaska Trump-Putin summit and Trump’s remarks just afterwards put spheres of influence back on the global agenda. Ignoring allies and partners, Trump prioritized a grand bargain with Russia, raising the specter also with China of an even more wide-ranging grand bargain. Russians were thrilled with the apparent acquiescence to their model of Yalta 2.0, accepting not only deal-making with little regard for states not at the top of the geopolitical pecking order but also the historical reasoning behind it. India could be the loser if Sino-US talks accommodate a Sinocentric sphere, but India also could build on its close Russian ties, reach an agreement with China, and seek a slot as the fourth party to reconstruct great power relations. This would prove tricky, given wariness of China’s sphere and uncertainty over Trump’s deal-making with China, still a work in progress. If China welcomed the Trump-Putin understanding as throwing a wrecking ball into US alliances, it had yet to clarify how it would treat India in this transformation of great power relationships.

Conclusion

Chinese views of the China-Russia-India triangle have long raised more doubts than Russian ones. In 2020, the Sino-India clash further dimmed them. Biden’s appeals to Modi and their summit in 2023 were reflected in Chinese analyses as well. From 2023, pessimism over the triangle intensified, along with recognition that Russia-India relations had weakened and implicit Chinese advice to Russia on how to respond to this tendency and to place this bilateral nexus in the context of the triangle with China and the India-US relationship in a manner more favorable for China. Yet, Trump breathed new hope into the prospects for boosting this triangle.

After the June “12-day war” between Iran and Israel, with the United States entering at the end, the NATO summit, followed by the BRICS summit, tested the temperature of the global order. The absence of Japan and South Korea from the Hague NATO summit set back the Biden strategy of linking the European and Asian theaters, complementing the Indo-Pacific framework. Likewise, the absence of Xi Jinping from the Brazil BRICS summit, which some took as evidence of dissatisfaction over Brazil giving Modi pride of place with a state dinner, pointed to the lack of solidarity in this grouping. Russia’s marginality, as Iran was under attack, exposed its weakness as a partner to both China and India. US allies could defer to Trump over Iran without losing geopolitically, but the emptiness of Russia’s claim to be a power in the Middle East had damaged its partners, China above all. The China-Russia-India triangle appeared less robust, but so too did US-led multilateralism to counter China and Russia.
Chinese recognized that the “Trump shock wave” was having global effects, accelerating global change, with the eye of the storm the triangle of China, the US, and Russia, and debate proceeded on the assumption that China needed to respond, bolstered by news in August 2025 of Trump’s latest unilateral behavior. Even before that, hope rested on relations between Moscow and New Delhi enduring, with Modi not forsaking strategic autonomy and balancing, even if they were limited, with no prospect of narrowing the strategic gap between the two. Russia will adhere to its anti-US approach, while India will participate in groups Russia leads without supporting an anti-West direction.²⁶ There would be no benefit in alienating India in a way that could drive it into the US camp.