Two full days after India’s foreign secretary, Vikram Misri, and external affairs minister S Jaishankar, claimed in separate forums that India and China had reached an agreement on patrolling their disputed border, there is still no unequivocal corroboration from China.
On Wednesday, the first bilateral meeting since 2019 between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and China’s President Xi Jinping took place on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia.
According to the press statement issued by India’s Ministry of External Affairs after the Modi-Xi meeting, “Welcoming the recent agreement for complete disengagement and resolution of issues that arose in 2020 in the India-China border areas, Prime Minister Modi underscored the importance of properly handling differences and disputes and not allowing them to disturb peace and tranquillity. The two leaders agreed that the Special Representatives on the India-China boundary question will meet at an early date to oversee the management of peace and tranquillity in border areas and to explore a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable solution to the boundary question. The relevant dialogue mechanisms at the level of Foreign Ministers and other officials will also be utilized to stabilize and rebuild bilateral relations.”
While the Indian statement claimed, as had Misri earlier, that an “agreement for complete disengagement and resolution of issues that arose in 2020 in the India-China border areas” had been reached, the official Chinese read-out of the summit meeting was noticeably more generic:
“The two leaders commended the important progress the two sides had recently made through intensive communication on resolving the relevant issues in the border areas. Prime Minister Modi made suggestions on improving and developing the relationship, which President Xi agreed to in principle.”
This deniability was also evident in the responses of China’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Lin Jian, to queries from three international press organisations at his daily press conference on Tuesday. In all his responses, Lin sidestepped the opportunity to endorse, or to refute, Indian claims of a breakthrough in negotiations with China.
Most China experts and officials agree that a breakthrough in border talks would constitute a return to the status quo ante of May 2020, when People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops began their intrusions across the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Ladakh and occupied Indian territory in five sectors – Galwan, Gogra-Hot Springs, Pangong Lake, Depsang and Demchok.
In multiple rounds of negotiations since mid-2020 between Chinese and Indian diplomats and generals, the two sides claimed to have reached patrolling agreements in three areas: the Galwan valley, Hot Springs – Gogra, and the Pangong Lake area.
Misri’s claim on Monday pertains to the two areas – Depsang and Demchok – where the PLA remains in possession of Indian territory. These areas constitute the bulk of the disputed area.
New Delhi insists that both sides return to the ground positions that existed in May 2020, which it terms as a “restoration of the status-quo-ante.”
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With New Delhi and Beijing having achieved troop disengagement and mutual pull-backs in three sectors, India’s minimum negotiation objective is a similar troop pull-back in the remaining two sectors: Depsang and Demchok.
Jaishankar, a key Indian negotiator in the border talks with China, knows this well. Yet, he apparently failed to distinguished the three sectors where disengagement has been carried out, with the other two sectors where disengagement has not been agreed.
He stated: “What the foreign secretary has said is what I can also say: that we reached an agreement on patrolling and with that we have gone back to where the situation was in 2020. We can say that the disengagement process with China has been completed,” he stated.
On Tuesday, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Lin Jian, spent much of his daily press conference avoiding answering press questions about the veracity of India’s claim.
The first question came from international press agency, Reuters, whose correspondent said: “The Indian Foreign Minister said yesterday that India and China have reached a deal on patrolling along the disputed border in the Himalayas. He said it can lead to disengagement and resolution of a conflict that began in 2020. Could we confirm with the [Chinese Foreign] Ministry that such an agreement was achieved?
Lin Jian answered in generics: “Over a recent period of time, China and India have kept close communication through diplomatic and military channels on issues related to the China-India border. The two sides have reached resolutions on relevant matters, which China speaks highly of. Going forward, China will work with India to implement these resolutions.”
In answering this question, Lin Jian drew no distinction between the three resolved areas of Galwan, Gogra-Hot Springs and Pangong on the one hand, and the two unresolved areas of Depsang and Demchok on the other.
A second question was asked by the Press Trust of India (PTI), again making no distinction between the five disputed areas. PTI asked: “Now that you have confirmed the Indian foreign secretary’s announcement yesterday about the agreement reached to end the standoff there, and you also said China speaks highly about this particular agreement, can you please provide some details? How did the two countries come to reach an agreement? Has that agreement been completed? Is it ready to put it into implementation?”
Lin Jian again sidestepped the question deftly. “As I just said, China and India have kept close communication through diplomatic and military channels on relevant border issues. The two sides have reached resolutions. Going forward, China will work with India to implement these resolutions.”
Following up, international business publication Bloomberg asked: “You said that China and India have reached a resolution on relevant matters. Can you specify what the relevant matters are? Is this about the border and the Line of Actual Control?
Lin Jian responded: “I’ve answered that question and have nothing more to add.”
The Chinese reluctance to spell out what has been agreed and not agreed suggests a lot more work is still needed to take the two sides back to the situation which prevailed before China began its incursions five years ago.
Colonel Ajai Shukla (Retired) is a columnist, commentator and journalist who covers regional security issues in South Asia and the Indo-Pacific, military technology and India’s defence economy.
