Karan Thapar 
One of India’s former Ambassadors to China Ashok Kantha, who is presently the director of the Institute of Chinese Studies, says President Xi Jinping’s refusal to personally attend the G20 summit on Saturday in Delhi marks a further deterioration in India-China relations. Although Kantha declined to call this a snub, he did say there was “essential messaging” behind the Chinese president’s decision not to come to Delhi. Kantha said the message was that relations are in a downward spiral and there are no real prospects of improvement in the near future.
In an interview to The Wire, Kantha said that the Modi government needs to be more transparent and less opaque about the relationship with China. Speaking about the meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi had in Johannesburg last month and the different versions put out by the Indian and Chinese governments, Kantha accepted that these versions “contradict each other”. However, he said this is a reflection of the “dire” relationship between the two countries.
Kantha said that the differences and disagreements over the border are only one aspect of the problems affecting India-China relations. He said there are other structural concerns, including their different ways of seeing the world, the trade imbalance and China’s belief that India is ganging up against Beijing, which have not got the attention they need because the border dispute is the priority at the moment.