India, Sept. 12 -- The biggest highlight of the 18th BRICS Summit underway in New Delhi is the thaw in relations between China and India. China's President Xi Jinping's visit is his first to India since 2019. Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited China in 2025 for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting. These interactions follow a deterioration in relations between the two countries after a border dispute erupted in 2020.

What promise or potential does this diplomatic thaw and possible detente hold? China is already the world's second largest economy. India will soon become the third largest. To be sure, the two have a large gap between them. Here is what a non-zero-sum-game Sino-Indian relationship could do for the Global South as...