China and India have taken a new step to resolve their long-standing border issues. The Earth’s most populous nations have reached an agreement on patrols along their disputed border. The arrangement, announced on Monday by Delhi and confirmed this Tuesday by Beijing, lays the foundations for relaxing tensions between the two nuclear powers, which went into a tailspin in 2020. after a violent altercation between soldiers from both countries.
The announcement has been timed with the arrival of the leaders of the two neighbors, Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi, to the Russian city of Kazan, where it begins this Tuesday a BRICS summit, organization of emerging powers of which both are founding members, in addition to Brazil, Russia and South Africa. The conclave could offer an ideal context for a new bilateral meeting between the leaders. In the last meeting of the BRICS, in Johannesburg Last year, they already managed to put a stop to the deterioration of relations, which had been in free fall for three years. After a bilateral meeting, Xi and Modi agreed to lower the temperature on the more than 3,400 kilometers of disputed and undefined border in the Himalayan region, known as the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
Following Monday’s announcement, Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri assured that the arrangement would lead “to the resolution of the issues that had arisen in 2020,” and that “next steps in this regard” would be taken. The Indian Foreign Minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, also certified on Monday that this was a “positive” development. “We have returned to the situation we were in in 2020,” he said, as collected The Times of India. The agreement, he assured, would allow the resumption of border patrol tasks that have hindered each other since the 2020 skirmish, which left more than 20 soldiers dead, most of them Indian, and relationships in tatters. “I think it’s a good development,” Jaishankar said. “Product of a very patient and persevering diplomacy.” According to him, he has held meetings with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, since September 2020 to try to resolve the dispute.
Beijing confirmed the agreement this Tuesday through a Foreign Ministry spokesperson. “In recent times, China and India have maintained close communication through diplomatic and military channels on issues related to the Sino-Indian border,” Lin Jian said in a routine press appearance. “Both sides have reached resolutions on relevant issues, of which China speaks very favorably. In the future, China will work with India to implement these resolutions,” he said. Xi and Modi will meet this Wednesday on the sidelines of the BRICS summit, as announced this Tuesday by the Indian Foreign Secretary.
India and China, which experienced a brief border war in the Himalayas in 1962, had achieved a precarious balance for years, avoiding violent clashes in their periodic border clashes. Beijing claims a large part of the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. In turn, New Delhi considers the Aksai Chin region, controlled by de facto for his neighbor. The 2020 skirmish left at least 24 dead, 20 of them on the Indian side, after a battle involving blows and sticks in a disputed area of the Galwan Valley, on the line of separation between the two forces in Aksai Chin. It was the bloodiest confrontation between the two armies since 1967.
The crisis immediately led to an escalation of tensions in diplomatic and commercial relations. India intensified scrutiny of Chinese investments, banned numerous mobile apps from its neighbor, cut direct passenger air routes, and both countries ended up expelling journalists from their neighbor. Since then, small, low-intensity sparks have also erupted on the border. The agreement in Johannesburg between Xi and Modi in August 2023 allowed the diplomatic machinery to be greased. In September this year, the Indian Foreign Minister stated that around 75% of the “disengagement” issues on India’s border with China had been resolved, and the Indian Aviation Minister said that the two countries had discussed the early resumption of direct passenger flights.
