India-China relations: A step forward… and a couple back

India-China relations: A step forward… and a couple back

E paperSubscriptionLogin OpinionIndia-China relations: A step forward… and a couple backIt is not known whether NSA Ajit Doval had been given a hint of what was to come or it was deliberately kept a secret to be sprung after the conclusion of the scheduled special representatives meetingIndian and Chinese troops at the border

Shastri Ramachandaran Published: 11 Jan 2025, 9:06 PM

On 27 December, the Chinese news agency Xinhua reported that the authorities in northwest Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region had announced the formation of two new counties, He’an and Hekang, in the Hotan Prefecture. Aksai Chin, which New Delhi claims is under Chinese occupation, falls in Hotan, known as Khotan in India.

Since the areas are in what India considers occupied territory, the MEA’s reaction was not unexpected. What was strange, though, was that it came after a full week. On 3 January, MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said, “We have lodged a ‘solemn protest’ with the Chinese side through diplomatic channels. Parts of jurisdiction of these so-called counties fall in India’s Union Territory of Ladakh”.

Jaiswal added that India had “never accepted the illegal Chinese occupation” of its territory. “[The] creation of new counties will neither have a bearing on India’s long-standing and consistent position regarding our sovereignty over the area nor lend legitimacy to China's illegal and forcible occupation of the same.” China is not known to have reacted to the MEA spokesperson’s statement, possibly because it sees it as a domestic compulsion.

It looked like India–China ties might be on the mend when Beijing and New Delhi came to an agreement on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in October 2024. This was followed by high-level meetings to normalise relations that had broken down after the violent military conflict in the Galwan Valley in June 2020.

Soon after the pact for disengagement of Indian and Chinese troops in eastern Ladakh, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping met in Russia’s Kazan on 23 October. External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar also had a meeting with China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

This was followed by a revival of the dialogue between the special representatives (SRs) of the two countries on the boundary issue after a gap of five-and-a-half years. (SR- level talks had stalled following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic and Galwan.) India’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval held talks with Wang Yi in Beijing on 18 December, which was seen as another positive step in normalising bilateral relations, until Beijing dropped the bombshell less than ten days after the Doval–Wang meeting.

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It is not yet known whether Doval had been given a hint of what was to come or it was deliberately kept a secret to be sprung after the conclusion of the scheduled SR meeting. Curiously, on 26 December, a day before the Xinhua report on the new counties, China’s defence ministry had said that Chinese and Indian militaries are “comprehensively and effectively” implementing the agreement to end the standoff in eastern Ladakh and that “steady progress” was being made.

Chinese defence spokesperson Senior Colonel Zhang Xiaogang made the remarks during a media briefing. He said that in recent times, based on the important consensus reached by the leaders of the two countries, China and India had maintained close communication on the border situation through diplomatic and military channels and achieved “great progress…”. The creation of two new counties and reiteration of plans to build a dam on the Yarlung Tsango river in Tibet (the Brahmaputra in India)—which would affect India as a lower riparian state—therefore came as a surprise.

China, in turn, may like to remind us of India’s August 2019 action in Jammu and Kashmir, when Jaishankar was set for his first visit as external affairs minister to China (where he had been India’s ambassador from 2009 to 2013). His visit came against the backdrop of China expressing concern over the scrapping of Article 370 and making Ladakh a Union Territory.

Beijing said these actions were “unacceptable” as “China always opposed India's inclusion of Chinese territory in the western section of the China–India boundary under its administrative jurisdiction”.

Jaishankar’s China visit—finalised before J&K’s special status was revoked and the state split into two UTs—was to plan President Xi’s visit to India for the second summit with Modi. This was to be a follow-up on the Wuhan meeting of April 2018 that renewed bilateral relations after the Doklam military standoff in 2017. Instead, he had to soothe Chinese feathers ruffled by the J&K development.

Ashok Kantha, former ambassador to China who was also director of the Institute of Chinese Studies, underscores how little such diversions serve the larger objectives of the relationship. “We are rightly objecting to administrative measures by China in the territory occupied by them in the Western Sector, much the same way they keep protesting about our activities in Arunachal Pradesh or, earlier in 2019, when a new political map of India was released following the reorganisation of Jammu and Kashmir. India had also lodged a strong protest over the release of a new Chinese map in 2023, which showed the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh and Aksai Chin within China’s borders. If the Chinese wish to play this game, so can we.”

It may or not be coincidence that every high-level engagement between the two countries is either preceded by or followed by such provocations and consequent protests. While these may not really impede the measured steps to normalise relations, they can alter perceptions and be seized upon by powerful interests that do not want China and India to settle bilateral differences in their common interest.