Xi-Trump Summit: US-China G2 Rapprochement to Avoid Thucydides Trap
The summit meeting of the leaders of China and the United States in Washington appears to signal a rapprochement between the two superpowers. President Trump has repeatedly referred to what he calls "G2", without mentioning "G7" or "G20", the groups that include many more countries. This development is seen as positive for world peace but it diminishes India's significance as a "counterweight to China" and the benefits Indians expected to flow from the US-China confrontation in Asia.
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| President Trump Personally Welcomed President Xi at Andrews Air Force Base |
The fact that President Trump personally received President Xi at Andrews Air Force Base upon his arrival is yet another indication that the US now recognizes China as a peer competitor. President Xi, for his part, has talked about the need for the two superpowers to avoid the "Thucydides Trap", a reference to the potential for war between an established superpower and a rising superpower.
Top American officials have been preparing for this moment for several years. In an interview on Fox News, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Brian Kilmeade in 2025 that “China is going to be a rich and powerful country. No matter what we do, that’s what – we’re going to have to deal with that. But we have to deal with the reality. What we cannot have is a world where China is so powerful, we depend on them. And that’s right now where we’re headed, unfortunately. That’s going to change. That’s going to change under President Trump”.
Anthony Blinken who preceded Secretary Rubio made a similar acknowledgement earlier in 2022: “China is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to do it,”
"One of the most complex and arguably most important relationships we have is the one with China. There are aspects of contestation, there are aspects of cooperation, and we want to avoid conflict. They're a lot bigger than we are, their market's a lot bigger, their manufacturing is three times ours, they've got more ships, they put forward more papers and more patents. As strong and as powerful as we are, playing one-on-one can be tough", Blinken added later in 2023.
The Beijing-Washington rapprochement is clearly in Pakistan's interest. Islamabad has long sought to balance its foreign policy between China and the United States through a pragmatic hedging strategy, gaining economic, military, and diplomatic benefits from both superpowers while maintaining strategic autonomy. But the relationship between Pakistan and China is not the same as the one between Pakistan and the United States. Pakistan's ties with China are strategic while those with the United States remain tactical and transactional. What has changed recently is that Pakistan is no longer waging war to help the United States as it did during the "Cold War" and the "War on Terror". Instead, Pakistan has emerged as a peacemaker between the US and Iran.
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India's 'unsettled relations' with US a headwind for economy, adviser says | Reuters
https://www.reuters.com/world/india/indias-unsettled-relations-with-us-headwind-economy-adviser-says-2026-09-25/
NEW DELHI, Sept 25 (Reuters) - The Indian economy is facing near-term headwinds from "unsettled relations" with the United States, global energy prices, and the absence of "AI play" in the country, the country's chief economic adviser said on Friday.
@KushagraSaxena_
India's former Ambassador to the United States has just demolished the Modi government's biggest foreign policy myth.
Mr Navtej Sarna who represented India in Washington & London, writes in The Week that the India-US relationship has cratered significantly & that in America's eyes, India is not the strategic partner we believed we were.
Read that again. This is not the opposition. This is one of India's most senior diplomats.
Here is what 20 months of Modi-Trump friendship has produced -
🔹A US sanctions law threatening India with 100% tariffs for buying Russian oil
🔹India clubbed with just four other countries for punishment
🔹Votes against India cutting across party lines, including from the Congressional India caucus
🔹Even an Indian American congressman voted in favour
🔹US senator publicly told India - Clean up your act
🔹A bipartisan consensus built over 25 years has now cracked
& what was the government's strategy? Mr Sarna spells it out -
🔹Begging for investment in the US
🔹Ego massages for Trump AND his family
🔹Fawning over his envoys
His verdict - it has NOT worked.
PM who shouted Ab ki baar Trump sarkar in Houston owes the nation an answer:
🔹Where is the strategic partnership you sold to India?
🔹What did years of hugs and stadium rallies actually get us?
🔹Why is India being lectured instead of respected?
India stood up to the world on the nuclear file and came out stronger. That took spine, not selfies.
Mr Sarna says it plainly, dignity of a nation is non negotiable.
Stop the photo ops. It is time to call the bully's bluff.
https://x.com/KushagraSaxena_/status/2104440762972959047?s=20
@dhume
I wish Indians would stop pretending—to themselves and to the world—that China and India are still clubbed together in any meaningful way. China has emerged as a major world power. There’s no guarantee that India will automatically follow suit.
https://x.com/dhume/status/2104039466369200343?s=20
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Jayant Bhandari
@JayantBhandari5
The gulf between China and India is not merely economic. It is cultural. China has virtue, work ethic, honor, and skills. If India can bridge the gap in 17 centuries, it will be lucky. For now, India is falling apart, degrading, and getting lost in debauchery.
https://x.com/JayantBhandari5/status/2104290922762842220?s=20
@PravinSawhney
Contrary to what most analysts believe, President Xi's state visit to America was good for America, China & Russia with negative implications for India. The multipolar world is a reality & President Trump has acknowledged this.
Will explain all this in a video to be online by tomorrow ( September 29) evening!
https://x.com/PravinSawhney/status/2104458588660121809?s=20
India readies $25 billion for Deep Tech investment as U.S. and China race ahead
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/29/india-investment-billions-tech-ai-us-china.html
India is planning to invest $25 billion in its nascent deep tech industry as it tries to catch up to China and the U.S.
Deep tech is a broad term used for start-ups in artificial intelligence, semiconductors, advanced manufacturing, drones and space tech.
Deep tech is becoming “very critical” to every country amid rising geopolitical tensions, leading to an investment push from the Indian government.
While venture capital and private equity leaders in India are confident that a global Deep Tech champion would emerge out of India, they were hesitant to put a timeline on it.
India is preparing to deploy $25 billion to support Deep Tech start-ups in the country, as it tries to catch up with the U.S. and China in the global tech race to cut its reliance on frontier foreign technology.
In the last decade, India invested $11.6 billion in Deep Tech, Rajat Tandon, president of the Indian Venture and Alternative Capital Association, told CNBC.
But now, the government alone has committed to invest $11 billion under the Research Development Infrastructure Fund, which will be matched by venture capital and private equity fund managers, he said.
Three or four billion more will be added, making ”$25 billion available to be spent on Deep-Tech investments,” Tandon said.
Deep Tech is a broad term used for start-ups in artificial intelligence, semiconductors, advanced manufacturing, drones and space tech. Experts told CNBC that the funding push comes as the government has realized that frontier tech is becoming “very critical” amid rising geopolitical tensions.
China and the U.S. currently lead the global AI race, and while Chinese tech is seen with suspicion in India, Washington’s curbs on tech exports make it unreliable.
“Tariffs from the U.S. actually help this [Deep Tech] segment a lot,” Anandamoy Roychowdhury, managing director of Crane Venture Partners, said, adding that India will develop local Deep Tech companies as it fears that “important technology can get cut off at any point.”
Some of these fears were realized earlier in June when Anthropic disabled access to its new models — Fable 5 and Mythos 5 — for foreign nationals, complying with an export-control directive from the U.S. government.
The start-up funding leaders who had gathered for SuperReturn Asia said that India’s Deep Tech companies were at a nascent stage but added that the ecosystem was poised to create global champions eventually given the quality of ideas and talent in the country.
There is a “dramatic acceleration of innovation” in the Deep Tech space in India, Shweta Rajpal Kohli, president and chief executive of Startup Policy Forum, said, adding that some companies are moving from prototype to “real commercialization.”
Earlier this year, Vibe-coding startup Emergent, space tech company Skyroot and India’s full-stack sovereign AI company Sarvam became unicorns as their valuations crossed $1 billion during the latest fundraising round.
‘Candy store’
“I feel like a kid in a candy store,” Roychowdhury of Crane Ventures said, describing his experience of scouting for Deep Tech start-up investments in the country. About 80% of his $150 million APAC fund is currently concentrated in India, he shared.
In August, the IVCA, in a report, said that its survey across 100 funds in the country showed that nine out of 10 funds in India were deploying capital in Deep Tech startups, with 37% holding a stake in 11-20 such companies,
The report added that in 2025 the sector received nearly $3 billion in funding—its highest ever, even as overall start-up funding in India fell. However, it also underscored the massive funding gap with the U.S., where $136 billion was raised.
One of the key disadvantages for Indian Deep Tech start-ups over those in the U.S. is the lack of domestic capital required to scale these long-gestation, innovative investments.
@Chellaney
Trump Is Not the Whole Problem
The belief in some quarters in India that U.S.-India relations will return to normal once Donald Trump is no longer president ignores the structural shift in American policy toward India. The shift began in the latter half of the Joe Biden presidency and has accelerated under Trump. Washington no longer views India’s rise as entirely benign and is determined, as U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau bluntly stated on Indian soil, not to repeat its China mistake with India.
When Indian Foreign Minister Jaishankar earlier this week called out Washington’s “lack of empathy” over India’s terrorism concerns and pointed to U.S. tariff shifts as a source of “bumps,” Modi responded with a phone call to Trump. The Indian leadership is seeking to maintain a warm working relationship with the Trump administration for strategic reasons while ensuring that its official voice clearly records India’s discontent on sensitive issues.
It is also addressing the political necessity of blunting critics at home who accuse the government of being overly compliant with Washington. That effort has been reinforced by the public outcry over the government’s recent release of American covert operative Matthew Aaron VanDyke and his six Ukrainian accomplices following an intervention by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The seven had been arrested by India’s National Investigation Agency, which accused them of terrorist conspiracy and waging war against the Indian state.
New Delhi must face up to a difficult reality: Simply waiting for Trump’s departure will not restore the old U.S.-India relationship. The underlying shift in Washington’s view of India predates Trump and is likely to outlast him. New Delhi will have to adjust to an American policy that increasingly sees India's rise not simply as a strategic opportunity but also as a source of economic and geopolitical friction.
https://x.com/chellaney/status/2105837169029890523?s=46&t=Uy6jyUH6DlEyIPi6Mq6AGQ