New Delhi: Chinese ambassador Xu Fiehong on Thursday (September 19) declared that India-China relations had reached a “crucial stage of improvement and development”, highlighting the increased frequency of high-level meetings in recent months.
Since 2020, relations between the two Asian giants have been frozen due to the stand-off between their militaries at the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh.
The stand-off had even led to the first casualties at the Sino-Indian border in the last forty years.
After several rounds of military and diplomatic talks, India and China disengaged at four locations – Pangong Tso, PP-17A, PP-14 and Gogra-Hot Springs.
However, since the last disengagement at Gogra-Hot Springs in September 2022, progress on this front has largely stalled.
There was some anticipation of movement last year ahead of the G-20 summit, when it was still expected that Chinese President Xi Jinping would travel to Delhi. But with Xi’s decision not to attend the summit, that momentum also faded.
However, in July this year, external affairs minister S. Jaishankar, and member of the Chinese Communist Party political bureau and director of the Office of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission, Wang Yi, met twice in back-to-back meetings in the multilateral summits in Astana and Vientiane.
Thereafter, the foreign office-led Working Mechanism for Consultation & Coordination on India-China Border Affairs had two meetings within a month, on July 31 and August 30.
Then earlier this month, national security adviser Ajit Doval met with Wang on the sidelines of the BRICS security officials’ meeting in Russia.
For the first time, the Chinese ambassador highlighted the notable rise in the frequency of meetings, interpreting it as a sign that talks were nearing a pivotal shift.
“At present, China-India relations are at a crucial stage of improvement and development. Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi met with Indian external affairs minister [Jaishankar] twice in the past two months, and met with Indian national security advisor [Doval] a few days ago. They had in-depth communication and reached important consensus on the improvement of bilateral relations,” he said in a speech on the theme of “Joining Hands to Advance Modernisation and Achieve Common Development of China and India” on Thursday.
He said that China was “fully confident about the future of our bilateral relations”.
“It is hoped that people from all walks of life of the two countries actively contribute to the great cause of China-India friendship and cooperation and push forward the sound and stable development of China-India relations,” added Xu.
His remarks are significant as next month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will travel to Russia for the annual BRICS summit, where Xi will also be in attendance.
Therefore, there is rising speculation that there could be a meeting, even if brief, between the two leaders.
The last time that the two had talked was at the sidelines of the SCO summit in South Africa in 2023.
Border talks have reached a stalemate as India wants a resolution of the remaining two stand-off points at Depsang and Demchok. China, however, insists that the two points are not part of the current stand-off but legal issues in the larger boundary dispute.
India’s stance has been that the border standoff must be resolved before normalising ties, whereas China maintains that it should not impact the broader relationship.