A fully stable relationship has been elusive to India and China. Since the birth of the modern nation states, the unresolved border has continued to put an ominous shadow on the relationship. The lack of understanding toward each other has also resulted in major mistrust which has only grown with time. The Galwan clash of June 2020, which pushed the relationship into a total freeze for 4.5 years, has added to the existing mistrust. However, some positive momentum and thaw was finally achieved in October 2024 after multiple rounds of talks and has been pushing the relationship in a positive direction. But, given the history of the relationship, it will not be wrong to assume that a lot needs to be reformed for this relationship to be truly functional.
In a first after Galwan, the Indian defence minister Rajnath Singh visited Qingdao China from June 25 to June 26 to attend the defence ministers meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) meeting and met his Chinese counterpart, Admiral Dong Jun. It was during this meeting that the Indian side proposed a four-point plan to achieve a ‘permanent solution’ to the border problem. The four-point agenda includes: “adherence to the 2024 disengagement plan, continued efforts to de-escalate, accelerated efforts to achieve the goal of demarcation and delimitation at the borders, and the usage of the existing special representative level mechanism to prepare new processes to manage differences and improve relations”. Singh also reiterated the need to build and establish mutual trust, which has been adversely impacted after the 2020 Galwan clash.
The points clearly highlight the multiple level of challenges and issues which India-China relations face even after 75 years of diplomatic relationship. India was one of the first countries to recognize the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) under Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Since then, the relationship has faced major hurdles and what makes it ever more problematic is the existing unresolved border.
Singh has rightly asserted that there is a need to look for a permanent solution to the border as it has time and again proved to be a major obstacle in the improvement of the relationship. The idea promoted by China, which led to the thaw in 1988, was that borders can be resolved at a future date, while economic and other relationships improved, has been proven quite fragile. The India-China trade relations have boomed in the last four decades and today the bilateral trade stands at $118bn dollars, however, it has not proved to be a factor in actually bridging the trust deficit or strengthening the relationship. The fragility of diplomatic mechanisms has been witnessed time and again.
Both sides had realized the need for regular communication and they tried to look for ways to improve this. The lack of communication was quite apparent during the 73-day military standoff at Doklam. In order to address this lacunae, the two countries did engage in unofficial talks in the form of the Wuhan Summit of 2018 and the Mamallapuram Summit of 2019. These summits were supposed to help the leaders communicate better and help any future challenge like the standoff at Doklam. However, the Galwan clash of 2020 underscored the fact that the mistrust and miscommunication ran too deep.
However, India and China are two of the largest economies and nuclear power states and de-escalation is a crucial and necessary step toward improving the relationship. The Indian side’s reiteration is understood as a peaceful border is essential for overall growth of the country. But it appears that India and China need to genuinely understand each other’s concerns. Both have been working toward achieving their own respective goals and are trying to resolve the border issue as per their understanding. The unresolved border has time and time again pushed this relationship into uncertainty and the fact that the Confidence Building Mechanisms (CBMs) which were achieved and implemented by mutual understanding could be shattered by one incident underscores the need for better communication and peaceful resolution of the border.
For the last 75 years, the two countries have also built a domestic narrative on the border and this is today closely linked to the sovereignty and identity of the countries. For a resolution, the border will have to be negotiated, and as negotiations go, it will call for a compromise. The question this raises is: Which country or government will be comfortable accepting any such outcome? No government can be seen as giving up on territory and thus appear weaker. The mistrust is too deeply ingrained and the repeated border skirmishes initiated by Beijing time and again has not helped the case. Nationalism soars too high and too strong when it comes to resolving the border.
Even today, it appears that the two sides are talking parallel to each other. The Chinese have continued to stress the need to restart and establish people-to-people contact, which had completely broken after Galwan and also impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. Beijing has shown its proactiveness here by restarting the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra and also issuing visas to a large number of Indians. It is also asserting that direct flights should be restarted soon. Meanwhile, New Delhi has continued to push for a resolution of the border and push for de-escalation, which is clear from the Indian defence minister’s agenda too. The fact that no joint statement was made during the SCO defence ministers’ meeting further shows the gap in perception. India has been firm on asserting the role of Pakistan as a terrorist state while China continues to push a parallel narrative.
A stable and cooperative India-China relationship will be beneficial to them as well as the South Asian region but it can be achieved only when the two sides genuinely start to understand and trust each other.
The author is an associate professor at OP Jindal Global University
