The latest move highlights Trump’s policies, efforts to normalize and draw relationships closer in the wake of strict tariffs.
Released on October 3, 2025
India and China will resume direct flights between some cities this month after a five-year suspension once relations between the two countries begin to thaw, Indian authorities announced.
The close bond faces President Donald Trump’s aggressive trade policy.
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Direct flights between the two countries were suspended during the 2020 Covid pandemic, and did not resume as Beijing and New Delhi engaged in long-term border tensions.
On Thursday, the Chinese embassy in India said in a post on social media platform WeChat that flights between designated cities will resume by late October.
The reopening is part of the Indian government’s “approach to progressive normalization of India-China relations,” the embassy added.
India’s largest airline Indigo announced on Thursday that it will resume flights from India’s Kolkata to China’s Guangzhou from October 26th.
The reopening comes after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited China for the first time in seven years and attended a meeting of the regional security block, the Shanghai cooperative institution last month.
So Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed that India and China are development partners rather than rivals, and discussed ways to strengthen trade relations amid the uncertainty of global tariffs promoted by Trump.
The US president raised the tariff rate on Indian imports to a 50% stricter 50% last month, citing on the continued purchase of Russian oil. He also urged the European Union to slap 100% tariffs on China and India as part of an effort to pressure Moscow to end the war in Ukraine.
China-India relations plunged in 2020 after security forces clashed along the conflict borders in the Himalayas. The worst violence in decades killed four Chinese soldiers and 20 Indian soldiers, freezing high levels of political involvement.
