On November 20, Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh met Chinese Defense Minister Admiral Dong Jun on the sidelines of the ASEAN Defense Ministers’ Meeting-Plus in Vientiane, Laos. India and China agreed to work on a roadmap to rebuild mutual trust and confidence, while Singh called for reflecting on lessons learned from the “unfortunate” border clash in Galwan in 2020. He emphasized the need for the two countries to maintain amicable ties as neighbors and for global peace and prosperity.
The meeting took place a day after External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar met Chinese Communist Party Politburo member and Foreign Minister Wang Yi on the sidelines of the G-20 Summit in Rio de Janeiro on November 19. Both exchanges occurred almost a month after Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri at a media presser on October 21 announced a border pact with China. Soon afterward, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Chinese President Xi Jinping on the margins of the BRICS Summit in Kazan, Russia on October 23.
The spurt in high-level meetings between the two sides raises the question: Is a thaw in the making?
The Indian leadership has widely reacted to the disengagement in Eastern Ladakh. Hours after Misri announced the border arrangement in October, Jaishankar confirmed that India and China had completed disengagement along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). The external affairs minister lauded it as a “positive development” and credited the pact to “very patient and very persevering diplomacy.”
Jaishankar addressed the disengagement in Eastern Ladakh on various platforms and called it a “welcome step” that would facilitate “other steps,” but he underscored that rebuilding trust and cooperation would take time. Similarly, on October 22, India’s Chief of Army Staff General Upendra Dwivedi emphasized the importance of restoration of trust by not “creeping into the buffer zones” and laid down India’s plan for the border “disengagement, de-escalation and normal management of the LAC.”
On October 24, at the Chanakya Defense Dialogue, Singh stated that the border consensus with China comprised resumption of “patrolling and grazing to traditional areas” and emphasized that the consensus was achieved through the power of continuous dialogue. Later while addressing the media in Tezpur, Singh emphasized India’s intent on pushing the matter beyond disengagement but noted that it would need more time.
India has long maintained that the state of the border would determine the state of bilateral ties. The conclusion of disengagement along the LAC and the commencement of patrolling by the Indian army in the Demchok and Depsang region is definitely a step forward, as patrolling is a key element of border management. The disengagement at the remaining friction points in Eastern Ladakh was completed only after four years of tense standoff.
The changing dynamics at the border has brought positive movement in overall ties. The MEA, in a press release on Jaishankar and Wang’s meeting at Rio, said the ministers recognized that disengagement along the LAC had contributed to maintenance of peace and tranquility. Jaishankar and Wang then exchanged perspectives on the next steps and discussed resumption of the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra pilgrimage, data sharing on trans-border rivers, direct flights between the two countries, and media exchanges. The Chinese Foreign Ministry too highlighted that New Delhi and Beijing are now at a “new starting point.”
Additionally, Chief of Defense Staff General Anil Chauhan’s statement attributing the China-India border dispute to differing perceptions of maps and noting that “we cannot really say which is correct and which is wrong” signals a softening of India’s stance toward China.
India at present, as Singh rightly mentioned, maintains a stance of cautious optimism toward China. There are reasons for India to remain skeptical: the continued militarization of the border and the lack of a joint statement on the recently concluded border pact. New Delhi publicly proclaimed information on the border arrangement through the media, while China remained tight lipped – in fact, Chinese readouts did not even mention the term “disengagement.” Jaishankar appropriately mentioned, “I see disengagement as disengagement; nothing more, nothing less.”
While patrolling has resumed in Depsang and Demchok, India and China are yet to resume patrolling in other friction points that have already been disengaged, namely Patrolling Points 15 and 17A in Gogra Hotsprings area, Galwan and the north and south banks of Pangong Tso. Patrolling will need to be followed by de-escalation and finally a drawdown of troops. Therefore, much work remains before India and China can claim that the border has returned to the pre-2020 normal.
Apart from a contentious border, New Delhi confronts other challenges with Beijing, namely a skewed balance of trade in favor of China, the rising Chinese footprint in India’s immediate neighborhood (the Maldives, Bangladesh, Nepal, and unmistakably Pakistan), the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, and Chinese efforts to block U.S. and Indian initiatives to list Pakistan-based terrorists in the United Nations. Yet India’s position of sustained engagement with China stands in contrast to New Delhi’s diplomatic rigidity vis-à-vis Pakistan.
India’s rapprochement with China at the border while China is ramping up military drills around Taiwan signals Beijing’s strategic maneuver from one theater to the other. While the timeframe for attaining de-escalation along the Line of Actual Control remains unclear at the moment, China’s sudden interest in mending ties with India must be cautiously viewed in New Delhi as a tactic to buy time.