India, Sept. 12 -- Chinese President Xi Jinping's first visit to India in seven years and his bilateral with Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi is understandably going to dwarf everything else at the 18th BRICS summit in New Delhi.

At a time when US President Donald Trump has upended every norm of global diplomacy, I can understand why there's a need for us to stabilise relations with Beijing. I can even see the value - limited though it may be in the long-run - of optics and visual messaging when it comes to someone as volatile as Trump.

We saw the effect of this last year, when PM Modi's decision to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Tianjin and be pictured with Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin suddenly catapulte...