Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh said Monday that the two sides had reached a deal on the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement (BECA), which will allow the two nations to share satellite and sensor data, helping India better select military targets. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mark Esper are in India this week for the talks.

New Delhi and Washington have been looking for ways to enhance military and diplomatic ties in recent years, spurred on by concerns in both capitals about China’s growing strength. This year has been a particularly straining one for India-China relations, with a decades-long simmering border dispute erupting into deadly violence in June.

China and its state-run media organizations have framed India as a disposable proxy in the wider U.S. effort to contain Beijing, and has repeatedly warned New Delhi away from cooperation with President Donald Trump’s administration.

Ahead of the BECA announcement, the Chinese state-run Global Times newspaper—often used to air more nationalistic sentiment from inside the Chinese Communist Party—warned that India would likely lose any conflict with China.

“War is always in the minds of some Indians, no matter how messy their domestic situation is,” a Global Times article said, referring to India’s coronavirus outbreak—one of the worst in the world.

“The national strength, including military might, of China far exceeds that of India’s,” the article read. “Although India is a major power in political terms, it is bound to lose, should a war with China break out.”

“China and India in the past few months have been engaged in a new round of border frictions, and the talks are aimed at preventing bilateral ties from deteriorating,” the article read. “India needs to send goodwill signals, instead of resorting to bellicose approaches, and fanning nationalistic sentiments.”

“If India wants to win a fight, it should focus on winning the fight against the novel coronavirus. Regrettably, India has suffered a miserable defeat.”

In a separate article, Global Times dismissed the significance of the BECA deal, which is the fourth major defense agreement signed between the two nations since 2002.

“The Trump administration wants to use it as a fillip for his re-election, and India to flex its muscles to China rather than as a factual consolidation of diplomatic and security ties, as many foreign media have hyped,” Global Times said, citing Chinese observers.