A section of Indian media has been unwarrantedly citing a statement by a spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Mao Ning, during a media briefing on 13 September 2024, who said, “in recent years, front-line armies of the two countries have realised disengagement in four areas in the Western sector of the China-India border, including the Galwan Valley. The China-India border situation is generally stable and under control”. This statement is being used to create a sense of ‘breakthrough’ in ties, while the reality is, this is a mere reiteration of facts already known and the last disengagement along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Ladakh happened only two years ago, in September 2022, at Patrolling Point (PP) 15 in the Gogra-Hot Springs area.
Sometimes, obscured reality and half-truths are far more vicious than a complete cover-up of facts. The military situation along the LAC remains unchanged for the last two years, and thousands of troops are still on both sides of the undemarcated line. The military-to-military talks are in a stalemate since February 2024 when the last Corps Commander-level meeting took place. India seeks complete disengagement in the remaining two areas as a pre-requisite for normalising ties. Before disengagement at Hot Springs, three other points – at PP-14 (Galwan Valley), PP-17A (Gogra Post), and both banks of the Pangong lake – had witnessed disengagement since July 2020.
There have been minor skirmishes along the LAC since June 2020, amid border infrastructure development and a heavy build-up of troops on both sides, like the one that occurred in the Yangtse area of Tawang in the Eastern sector in October 2021 and December 2022. Satellite imagery shows that China has been building habitable structures on India-claimed territories in recent years, while giving Chinese names to Indian villages in Arunachal Pradesh. The armies of both countries have engaged in sporadic standoffs even before the Galwan incident, such as in Nathu La and Cho La in 1967, Tulung La in 1975, Sumdorong Chu in 1987, Depsang in 2013, Demchok in 2014 and Doklam in 2017. But the most fatal of all incidents since 1975 occurred in the Galwan Valley, which resulted in the death of 20 Indian soldiers and an unknown number of Chinese soldiers.
Recent bilateral engagements
There have been both positive and negative developments in the diplomatic and economic fronts lately. Earlier this month, on 12 September 2024, the Special Representatives for the India-China border talks mechanism, Ajit Doval and Wang Yi met in St. Petersburg, Russia, on the sidelines of a meeting of National Security Advisors of the BRICS (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa) grouping. In July 2020, the month following that of the Galwan incident, a conversation between the two veteran negotiators led to the first breakthrough at the LAC in the current standoff – the disengagement of troops from the clash site of Galwan Valley.
Fast forward four years to July 2024. The foreign ministers of India and China – Dr. S. Jaishankar and Wang Yi – met twice, first in Astana, Kazakhstan, on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit and later in Vientiane, Laos, on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meeting. In February last year, senior diplomatic officials from India travelled to Beijing for the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on India-China Border Affairs (WMCC) talks in their first face-to-face WMCC meeting since the current LAC standoff began in 2020. It was the 26th such dialogue since this mechanism came into existence in 2012.
During all these aforementioned interactions, both sides committed themselves to resolve the remaining issues, while normalisation is yet to be achieved. India wants to return to a status quo ante as of April 2020 and also the resolution of legacy disputes at Depsang and Demchok, while China conveniently views the dispute or differences in perception of the LAC as a ‘leftover problem’ from the British rule. The Indian side has repeatedly made it clear that there can be no back to normal without resolving the border question. China’s current Ambassador to India, Xu Feihong, took charge in May 2024, after an 18-month delay in appointment, the longest for the post since 1976, when bilateral ties were restored following the 1962 war. The senior Chinese diplomat has been on a charm offensive since then, meeting key figures in Delhi’s power circles.
Meanwhile, the legacy disputes at Depsang and Demchok, which China considers as not part of the current standoff, are yet to be resolved. Of the six friction points along the LAC in Ladakh, troops were withdrawn from the June 2020 clash site of the Galwan Valley in the weeks following the incident, the north and south banks of Pangong Lake in February 2021, Patrolling Point-17A of the Gogra-Hot Springs area in August 2021 and Patrolling Point-15 in September 2022. There are sixty-five such patrolling points along the LAC in Ladakh, of which India reportedly has lost access to twenty-six points to China and differences in perception of the line persists at multiple areas.
Underlying geopolitical games
India has been increasingly confident to play the Tibet and Taiwan cards lately and has stopped reiterating the ‘One China’ principle for many years now. In June, this year, New Delhi allowed the former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a bipartisan Congressional delegation accompanying her to meet the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the 14th Dalai Lama, in Dharamshala, and later they met the Prime Minister himself in New Delhi. Earlier in the same month, PM Modi responded to a congratulatory post on X from Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te on his election victory stating that he looks forward to closer ties between India and Taiwan, to “work towards mutually beneficial economic and technological partnership”.
Chinese Foreign Ministry had protested both these moves. President Xi Jinping, however, did not congratulate PM Modi on his re-election. Beijing’s suspicious engagement in New Delhi’s neighbourhood in South Asia and the Indian Ocean region, its disapproval of India’s bid for permanent membership at the UN Security Council (the remaining four UNSC permanent members support New Delhi), the resistance to India’s entry to the elite Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG), and the vetoing of UN sanctions on Pakistan-based terrorists further adds to the strategic mistrust and insecurity between the two Himalayan neighbours.
However, Indian restrictions on visas for Chinese professionals in selected industries were relaxed in November, last year, and again in July this year after several businesses in India were hit with a shortage of skilled workers. Subsequently, PM Modi toned down his rhetoric on China. In an interview given to Newsweek magazine, published in April 2024, the Prime Minister described relations with China as “important and significant” and expressed hope that stability along the LAC could be restored. In the same month, the Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh opined that border talks were “progressive and satisfactory” and “no fresh tension has come up”.
During an interaction at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy in Switzerland earlier this month, India’s foreign minister Dr. S. Jaishankar stated that “roughly 75% of the disengagement problems are sorted out”. However, the Chinese media’s open dislike for the veteran diplomat was clearly evident from a recent controversial article published in the state-run Global Times that was pulled back hours later. The op-ed piece, titled ‘India’s diplomacy has a ‘S. Jaishankar problem’’, took aim at Dr. Jaishankar’s remarks on 31 August at a media forum in New Delhi where he said the world has a “general China problem” and India was not the only country debating how to deal with Beijing.
In spite of such self-goals, Dr. Jaishankar and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi met twice in July this year – first on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Heads of State summit in Kazakhstan and then at an ASEAN meeting in Vientiane. Moreover, India has also doubled down on its military partnerships and joint exercises with countries in Southeast Asia. PM Modi’s visit to Singapore and Brunei earlier this month is a testament to India’s renewed focus on its “Act East” policy. Despite being partners in non-Western groupings such as the BRICS and the SCO, India chose to participate in the U.S.-led minilateral groupings, such as the Quad and the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA). The raison d’être of such flexible groupings can be explained by both ‘balance of power’ and ‘balance of threat’ theorisations in international relations.
‘Paradoxical’ economic ties
In July 2024, a mothership called at India’s first deep-water container transhipment port at the under-construction Vizhinjam port for the first time, ushering in a new era in India’s maritime history. Interestingly, the ship embarked on its journey from China’s Xiamen port, and twenty-four hi-tech cranes from China were delivered to the port since October last year. The state-owned Chinese company ZPMC, or the Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries Ltd., has provided more than two hundred such cranes for Indian ports, and port operators in India continue to install them.
Today, New Delhi’s biggest challenge is to balance its age-old security imperatives with that of its rapidly expanding industrial base, for which it can’t stop doing business with China, and most of the alternatives to Chinese goods and Chinese technology appear to be comparatively costly. This ‘paradoxical’ phenomenon is not unique to the two countries alone, as countries elsewhere in the world too engage in trade with adversaries for several reasons. Chinese technology is key to India’s infrastructure development as well.
India’s imports from China increased to $102 billion recently, which is 56% more than what was four years ago, out of a total $118 billion in bilateral trade. Thus, India’s trade deficit with China has risen by around 75% during this period. Recent data from the Global Trade Research Initiative reveals that Chinese imports to India crossed $100 billion in the financial year 2024, cementing China’s status as India’s largest trading partner, displacing the U.S. after a gap of two years. So, the overall nature of bilateral ties between India and China, considering this economic dimension, is adversarial and co-operative at the same time, and their economies are interlinked like never before.
However, the public sentiment in India towards China has largely turned negative owing to the border issue. Consequently, India’s economic, trade and investment policies are increasingly subjected to ‘securitisation’, as evident from its move to block 320 Chinese apps, including TikTok and WeChat, the suspension of direct flights, restrictions on Chinese investment and diversification of supply chains away from China through its participation in Western-led groupings such as the Quad, Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), Supply Chain Resilience Initiative (SCRI) and India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC). Today, China’s defence budget is almost three times as India’s, but the latter is fast catching up with rapid defence indigenisation and attempts to diversify arms supplies away from Russia.
Past standoffs and negotiations
It was quite an irony that in April 2020 – year of the Galwan incident – India and China marked the 70th anniversary of establishment of formal diplomatic relations, and in June 2024, China observed an event marking the 70th anniversary of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, a foreign policy concept first put forward in the Sino-Indian agreement of 1954, following which India officially recognised Tibet as part of the People’s Republic of China. However, the Panchsheel, as it was referred to by New Delhi, remained as a cornerstone of Indian foreign policy under Jawaharlal Nehru, until its essence and purpose were lost in the ashes of the 1962 war.
Bilateral ties remained in a state of coma for almost one-and-a-half decade after the war. Subsequently, diplomatic ties were restored in 1976. However, China has condemned India’s merger of Sikkim state in 1975 and the bestowment of full statehood to Arunachal Pradesh in 1987. Back in 1979, then Indian foreign minister, and later Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee made a landmark visit to China, and two years later, in 1981, then Chinese foreign minister Huang Hua reciprocated the move by visiting India, paving way for both countries to begin an annual dialogue.
Seven years later, in 1988, then Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi visited China and both countries agreed to set up a joint working group (JWG) on boundary disputes. Three years later, in 1991, Chinese Premier Li Peng visited India, followed by Prime Minister Narasimha Rao’s visit to China in 1993. The remaining part of the decade saw India and China signing two key agreements, in 1993 and 1996, thereby initiating steps to bring back peace and tranquillity along the border areas, in addition to an agreement to pull back troops from the Eastern sector in 1995.
The following year, 1996, witnessed the landmark visit of China’s Paramount Leader Jiang Zemin to India. Both nations agreed to reduce troops on the disputed border and avoid the use of force. The decade that followed also saw a series of confidence-building measures, including the 2005 Protocol and the 2012-initiated working mechanism for consultation and coordination on India-China border affairs that replaced the old JWG process between the foreign ministries. But it fell short of preventing the Depsang standoff in March 2013.
Later, in October 2013, a Border Defence Cooperation Agreement (BDCA) was signed between the defence officials of both countries, unlike civilian officials in the previous pacts. Since then, the new Paramount Leader who rose to power in China that year – Xi Jinping – upped the ante on border disputes with not only India, but also with other countries in China’s neighbourhood, including several ASEAN member-states. Experts are now of the view that China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has a much larger say in shaping the Chinese foreign policy than ever before, with President Xi Jinping heading the Chinese Communist Party and the Central Military Commission.
Way ahead for rapprochement
It is worthwhile to recall that in the previous century, leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union continued to have dialogues even during the peak time of the Cold War. In the case of India and China, between 2014, when Modi first became the Prime Minister of India, and June 2020, when the Galwan incident occurred, the Indian leader met his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping eighteen times, including in informal summits, visits to each other’s countries and meetings on the sidelines of multilateral summits. Despite this, the Galwan incident couldn’t be prevented, and the prospect of a repeat of similar incidents or far more fatal ones still looks imminent.
After Galwan, both leaders met twice – first in Bali, on the sidelines of the G20 summit of 2022 and then in Johannesburg on the sidelines of the BRICS summit of 2023. The Chinese leader chose not to attend the G20 summit of 2023 in New Delhi and sent Premier Li Qiang instead, the first time a Chinese Paramount Leader not attending the G20 summit since 2008, excluding the virtual summits of 2020 and 2021 during the pandemic. In July 2024, PM Modi skipped the SCO summit in Astana, Kazakhstan, while President Xi attended it. Now, there are two possibilities later this year for PM Modi and President Xi to meet face to face – the first in Kazan, Russia, for the BRICS Summit in October and the second in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for the G20 summit in November.
China’s $17.9 trillion economy is the second largest in the world, only behind the United States, while India’s $3.7 trillion economy is ranked the fifth. While the latter continues to be a lower middle-income country, the former has already progressed into an upper middle-income country in the last 40 years, powered by its fast modernisation and the upliftment of nearly 800 million people from absolute poverty. Both countries started off as independent countries in the 1940s and faced similar socioeconomic problems until four decades ago. Today, there is a tremendous scope for both countries to cooperate with each other, including in trade, climate change, energy security, Global South issues, and regional connectivity. But all of it depends squarely on how diplomacy progresses forward.
The circumstances are quite different today than it was four decades ago, considering the serious power gap between the two Asian neighbours, which India must fill in the coming years. More importantly, New Delhi must not be oblivious of the fact that China today is an economic and technological superpower in competition with the world’s pre-eminent superpower – the United States – and is fast catching-up on the military front as well. Dealing with such a power calls for meticulously crafted state policies – both foreign and domestic. India has been building up border infrastructure and deterrence capabilities at a pace faster than ever before. Continuing dialogue at the highest political levels makes it complete.
The two nuclear-armed neighbours must manage their competition responsibly and minimise the prospect of an unintended or accidental conflict to the best extent possible. There is also a strong need for standalone meetings to discuss and resolve the border question and not just along the sidelines of when regional or multilateral groupings meet. Without political dialogue going hand in hand with military dialogue, a new mechanism for peaceful coexistence and normalisation of ties can never be reached. Rather than working on old and ineffective frameworks of engagement, both sides must give a fresh start to building a broad consensus and a comprehensive framework for bilateral engagement, and it ought to be in tune with the current realities, respecting each other’s concerns and sensitivities.