AA Edit | Meetings Show India-China Ties Entering Positive Turf

The first Corps Commander-level meeting of the Indian and Chinese armies in the Eastern sector on Sunday held a particular significance because it was held in Arunachal Pradesh. But the meeting is not to be seen in isolation so much as being another exchange in a series of engagements through which attempts are being made to normalise relations after a low was hit in the standoff at the LAC in 2020 after the Galwan clashes had left casualties on both sides.

Coming as the meeting did not only amid conflicting territorial claims but also at a time of building tension with a strong military presence of both sides across the LAC in an Indian state on whose status China has chosen to keep harping about an old territorial claim, it carries a signal that China was prepared to yield some ground to India’s viewpoint that the boundary question has to settle first.

Post-Galwan, several Corps Commander meetings were held, invariably in the Ladakh sector. The move to include two more sectors came up in NSA’s meeting with Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi in China last month and the meeting at the Vacha-Damai border point was a direct consequence of that. Considering how India has been insisting that peace on the LAC will remain a core component on how it chooses to further ties with China, the location in Arunachal Pradesh as well as the timing can be seen as a confidence-boosting measure.

It augurs well for ties to get a further boost in continuing dialogue as China’s President Xi Jinping is expected to attend the BRICS summit in New Delhi that begins later this week. There had, of course, been wider breakthroughs which had come soon after Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi had met in the previous SCO summit in Tianjin, China, in 2025 after which visa services were resumed, so too direct flights as well as permission for the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra.

The brief Modi-Xi interaction in Bishkek is bound to have given further impetus to the dialogue processes that might help in not letting the border tensions boil over into another event that neither leader might like to encounter when the time is such the world situation fraught.

Given the fact that a global geopolitical churn is being witnessed since the return of Mr Donald Trump to the White House, the BRICS summit takes on added significance, especially at a time when China is aiming at a bigger role in affairs of the Global South while India has been at it for a while now in gaining recognition as a leading voice of that grouping. Furthermore, Mr Xi’s visit would carry an even greater import as he is scheduled to be at the BRICS before his summit with Mr Trump in Washington.

While China, India and, to an extent, Russia see the present situation as an incentive to forge an alternative world order, who makes the sharpest moves in New Delhi will be a matter of interest. India may, however, place a greater emphasis on playing the summit host even as it aims to further its ties with China after the great reset of 2024.

Face-to-face meetings between Mr Modi and Mr Xi have only led to more positive developments after their first bilateral meetings in Ahmedabad and Mamallapuram near Chennai had not produced the desired results of peace on the border before developing other aspects of the relationship.

The signs before the anticipated meeting of India and China leaders at the BRICS summit have been rendered a little more optimistic after the representatives of the armies interacted in Arunachal Pradesh.