Amid the dramatic events of recent weeks in Syria and South Korea and the imminent return to power of Donald Trump, a meeting between senior Chinese and Indian officials in Beijing on Wednesday received little attention. But the first formal talks in five years about a border dispute between the world’s two most populous countries were a significant path in a process that could reshape political alliances in Asia.
The six-point consensus agreed by China’s foreign minister Wang Yi and India’s national security adviser Ajit Doval aims to set new terms for how they deal with a dispute that has paralysed their bilateral relationship. Since an unarmed brawl in the Galwan river valley 2020 killed 20 Indian and an undisclosed number of Chinese soldiers, direct flights between the two countries have been halted and each country has expelled almost all of the other’s news correspondents.
“Both sides positively evaluated the solution reached between the two countries on border issues, reiterated that the implementation work should continue, and believed that the border issue should be properly handled from the overall situation of bilateral relations so as not to affect the development of bilateral relations,” Wednesday’s consensus document said.
The dispute goes back to China’s annexation of Tibet in 1951 when, for the first time, it had a direct border with the newly independent India. For India, the boundary was the McMahon line, the border with Tibet negotiated by British diplomat Henry McMahon just before the first World War.
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China and India seek to improve relations and tilt world’s economic axis
China did not agree to the McMahon line when it was first drawn on the map in the years following the end of the Qing dynasty and the People’s Republic of China was not about to accept it either. A series of skirmishes escalated in 1962 into a full-scale border war that ended with a redrawn but still disputed border known as the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
The border dispute has continued to cast a shadow over Sino-Indian relations, erupting every few years into a direct confrontation although the soldiers on both sides of the LAC are unarmed. A survey of Indian attitudes to China published by the Takshashila Institution this week found that 56 per cent agreed that the boundary dispute is at the front and centre of tensions between the two countries.
Most respondents favoured a closer economic relationship with China although almost two in three thought relations between the two countries would be better if China was a multiparty democracy. And in the dispute over who should select the next Dalai Lama, an overwhelming majority said it should be the Tibetan Administration in Exile rather than Beijing.
This week’s six-point consensus followed a meeting between Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi on the margins of the Brics summit in the Russian city of Kazan in October. Wednesday’s meeting was the first to take place since 2019 under the “special representative dialogue mechanism” established two decades ago.
The two sides have agreed to hold another round of talks in the same format in India next year, which will mark the 75th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Beijing and New Delhi. It will take more than one meeting to transform their relationship but both countries have good reasons for trying to reduce tensions.
The prospect of a fresh trade war with Washington under a new Trump administration stuffed with China hawks has inspired Beijing to improve as many relationships around the world as it can. And as protectionist barriers go up against Chinese exports to much of the developed world, India’s vast market is more attractive than ever.
Although India has deepened its security relationship with the United States in recent years, joining the Quad alongside Japan and Australia, it has done so while pursuing strategic autonomy. Modi has refused to fall into line with the western powers on the war in Ukraine, maintaining a lucrative economic relationship with Russia throughout.
India sees itself not as “anti-West” but as “non-West”, a stance shared by many other Brics countries which do not wish to make a choice between their security ties to Washington and their economic relationship with Beijing. India works with China not only in Brics but also in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) a political, economic and security organisation which also includes Russia, Iran, Pakistan and the Central Asian states.
Trump’s threat to impose blanket tariffs on imports could drive China and India closer together and Chinese investment could boost Indian ambitions to become a manufacturing hub. A closer relationship between these two countries with a combined population of 2.8 billion people could shift the world’s economic centre of gravity more decisively towards Asia.