When the Dragon and the Elephant Meet: Reflections on SCO Summit 2025

There are moments in history that look unremarkable on the surface—pictures of flags, formal handshakes, arrivals at an airport—yet they carry the weight of years of tension, missteps and deferred hopes. The SCO Summit in Tianjin felt like one of those moments. Watching leaders arrive, the bilateral meetings unfold, and a strangely amicable choreography of rhetoric and protocol, I found myself both hopeful and cautious.

The summit’s most striking scene, from an emotional and geopolitical point of view, was the meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping—their first direct high-level engagement in seven years. To see them exchange words about mutual trust and a commitment to border stability felt like the turning of a page. The live coverage captured much of this: the meeting and its immediate outcomes were detailed in real time SCO Summit LIVE: Ties with China moved in 'meaningful direction', says PM Modi.

What I took from the summit are a few clear, interlocking truths:

• Geopolitics is never only about power; it is also about timing and shared inconvenience. The Modi–Xi exchange did not occur in a vacuum. It happened amid broader economic pressures, notably new tariffs and a shifting trade architecture. Both leaders emphasized strategic autonomy and asked that their relationship not be read through a “third country lens” (Hindustan Times). That wording matters: it signals a desire to insulate bilateral restoration from external incentives or penalties.

• The summit yielded tangible, practical outcomes, not only diplomatic platitudes. Direct flights are set to resume; the Kailash Mansarovar yatra has been restarted; there was an agreed commitment to border stability and a renewed conversation about trade and investment balance. Those are small, incremental steps—yet they are the material stuff of daily life for millions and the test-bed of any durable normalization (Hindustan Times).

• The language and metaphors used mattered. Xi’s invocation of the “Dragon and Elephant” coming together is more than rhetoric; it’s a civilizational metaphor that implicitly asks both nations to see themselves as co-responsible actors for the region and the Global South. Modi’s consistent emphasis on mutual trust and respect responded to the long shadow cast by the 2020 border standoff. The words are not the end but a necessary precondition for the long work ahead.

• The summit was, by design, a multilateral theatre. The arrival of Vladimir Putin and other leaders—captured by multiple outlets reporting on the arrivals and the summit’s opening—makes clear that the SCO has become an essential node for conversations about a multipolar world (CGTN: Russian President Putin arrives in Tianjin for SCO summit 2025; Xinhua: Armenian PM arrives in Tianjin for SCO Summit 2025).

I would also note one small, symbolic vignette that felt emblematic of our moment: the presence of Xiao He, a humanoid robot assisting journalists and delegates at the summit (Times of India: Meet humanoid robot Xiao He). Here is a conference convened to solve human problems—borders, trade, trust—yet a machine is there to help interpret, translate and smooth interactions. The juxtaposition—humanoid precision helping fallible human diplomacy—felt like a metaphor for our age: technology as mediator, not master.

And yet, for all the hopeful signposts, I remain clear-eyed about the work ahead. What the summit produced were promises and arrangements; the true test will be implementation. Border agreements are fragile by definition. Trust is not a thing leaders can sign into being; it accumulates or erodes in the mundane, often invisible practices of verification, restraint, and institutional continuity.

There are also wider implications. If India and China truly choose to insulate their bilateral recalibration from outside pressures, they will affect global alignments. The SCO—once a relatively narrow regional security mechanism—now provides a stage for debates about multilateralism, trade sovereignty and the future architecture of global governance. That is both an opportunity and a responsibility.

Finally, as someone who thinks about technology, society and the long arc of human projects, I see the Tianjin summit as an exercise in pragmatic realism. Leaders chose to prioritize stability and cooperation in areas that touch citizens' lives directly—flights, pilgrimages, border management—while leaving harder political questions to be managed incrementally. That is sensible. Grand visions matter, but the durable work of peace is often small and steady.

I lef Tianjin with a modest optimism: not because conflict has vanished, but because both sides, for now, are taking small, verifiable steps that could, over time, rebuild enough trust to make cooperation routine rather than exceptional. For two giants whose futures are intertwined, that is perhaps the most meaningful outcome one could hope for.

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Regards,
Hemen Parekh