NEWDELHI: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi received China’s top diplomat on Tuesday, as the Asian powers resumed disputed border talks after years of tensions.
The neighbors and the world’s two most populous countries have been locked in a standoff triggered by deadly clashes along their Himalayan border, known as the Line of Actual Control, in 2020.
Tens of thousands of troops, tanks, and artillery have since been deployed on both sides of the LAC, with both countries building new roads, bunkers, and airstrips in the high-altitude area.
Despite multiple rounds of military and diplomatic engagements, friction points remained, with India restricting Chinese investments, banning dozens of Chinese apps, and scrutinizing trade ties, as it deepened relations with Beijing’s rivals — the US, Japan, and Australia.
But a recent disruption caused earlier this month by US President Donald Trump’s trade war, in which he unexpectedly hiked the total duty on Indian exports to 50 percent, has created an opening for the Asian powers to seek to repair ties.
Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, arrived in New Delhi for a three-day visit on Monday.
Ahead of meeting Modi, he held talks with his counterpart, S. Jaishankar, who told him in his welcome speech that after a “difficult period” in bilateral relations, the “two nations now seek to move ahead.”
Jaishankar said the visit would cover economic and trade issues, including cross-border trade, as well as people-to-people contacts.
Wang also met India’s National Security Adviser Ajit Doval for the 24th round of talks to discuss de-escalation of border tensions, and said he was ready to work with India “to build more consensus and identify the direction, the specific goals of the boundary consultations going forward, and create more conditions for the improvement and further growth” of bilateral relations.
A thaw between India and China began last year, when Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping held their first bilateral meeting in five years at a summit of BRICS nations in Russia’s Kazan.
They are expected to meet again later this month as Modi will visit China for a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. This will be the Indian prime minister’s first official trip to China in over six years.
“Both are moving gradually to try and normalize a relationship. If you go back to October last year when Prime Minister Modi met President Xi Jinping, you saw the beginnings of some sort of an effort towards normalization,” Manoj Kewalramani, chairperson of the Indo-Pacific Research Program and a China studies fellow at the Takshashila Institution, told Arab News.
But after years of freeze, change is not likely to happen immediately.
Kewalramani expects that as the two countries resume talks, they would be followed by more engagements at the levels of commerce, finance, industry and technology ministers.
“We can start to build on areas where there are commonalities and shared interests that would inject some sort of stability not only into the relationship but also into the geopolitics of the region,” he said.
“One can argue that the disruption that Donald Trump has caused has led to some degree of urgency, but I don’t think you’re going to see an overnight change in the relationship. I think what you are going to see is a slow, cautious, calibrated effort by both sides to try and arrive at some sort of a new equilibrium.”
