When the BRICS summit gets underway tomorrow in India, the meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be among the most keenly watched events.
Beijing confirmed Xi's attendance at the event on Thursday, marking the Chinese president's first visit to India since 2019, and since ties deteriorated following deadly border clashes in 2020.
"This is a really crucial moment," Vrinda Sahai, research analyst in the Security Studies Program at Carnegie India, told CNBC. "It's a great opportunity to use the BRICS summit as an excuse to have a really substantive bilateral meeting."
The meeting comes amid thawing relations between New Delhi and Beijing, and follows Modi's visit to China last year for the SCO summit, although border disputes and trade imbalance remain sticking points between the the two countries.
Border issues between New Delhi and Beijing are expected to be on the agenda, a dispute that goes back decades and saw the two countries go to war in 1962.