"Steady progress" has been the recurring official characterization of India-China ties since 2024. Critically examine whether military disengagement has translated into strategic trust-building.

The MEA readout of the Modi–Xi meeting on the margins of the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi again welcomed "steady progress" since their Tianjin meeting of August 2025 [4]. Yet progress measured in restored patrolling is not the same as strategic trust, which requires predictability of intent, not merely of deployment.

Where disengagement has delivered

• Ground stabilisation: the 21 October 2024 patrolling arrangement on Depsang and Demchok enabled withdrawal from the remaining 2020-era friction points [3].
• Verified restoration: the government confirmed complete disengagement from all friction points, with patrolling and grazing resuming as per long-standing pre-2020 practice [2][3].
• Institutional revival: the WMCC, Special Representatives track and Senior Commanders' meetings are functioning again, giving both sides routine crisis-management channels [1].
• Political normalisation: Kazan (2024) → Tianjin (2025) → New Delhi (2026) shows a phased, sustained re-engagement, extended into trade, supply chains and people-to-people ties [1][4].

Why strategic trust remains thin

• Disengagement ≠ settlement: the 2024 pact restored patrolling but left delimitation and demarcation of the boundary untouched; no mutually agreed LAC alignment exists.
• Reversibility: arrangements rest on cumulative understandings (1993, 1996, 2005, 2013 BDCA, 2024) rather than a treaty, and depend on continuing verification [1].
• Conditional framing: India reiterates peace and tranquility in border areas as a prerequisite for cordial ties — conditionality itself signals residual distrust [4].
• Structural frictions: the trade imbalance, supply-chain concentration and market-access barriers were flagged even at the leaders' level [4], while India's Quad engagement and border infrastructure build-up reflect continued hedging.
• Compartmentalisation: "differences should not become disputes" manages the dispute rather than resolving it [4].

Thus, disengagement has restored operational predictability but only begun strategic trust-building. Sustained convergence — early clarification of the LAC, revived SR-level boundary negotiation, trade rebalancing and calibrated people-to-people opening — can convert tactical calm into durable confidence, with India's 2026 BRICS chairmanship offering a constructive multilateral setting [5].