India-China: A high-level delegation from New Delhi-based think tank India Foundation visited China earlier this month in order to resume track-2 diplomacy between both sides. This comes on the heels of the leaders of both countries — as well as the foreign ministers and the special representatives — meeting amid easing of tensions between both sides in the border areas of eastern Ladakh, leading to disengagement between the Indian Army and the People’s Liberation Army.
The delegation from India Foundation, led by its president Ram Madhav of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), first went to Shanghai on an invitation from the Shanghai-based Fudan University, with which it holds regular dialogue. On the second leg, the delegation went to Lhasa, Tibet, led by Alok Bansal, the director of India Foundation.
“The visit was part of a regular dialogue that is being held every year between India Foundation and the Fudan University, which is also part of the track-2 diplomacy between both the countries,” Bansal told ABP Live. “Last year, China had sent a high-level delegation to India, this year it was our turn to go there. We were also able to go to Lhasa this time although we wanted to visit Kashgar, too, but that could not happen.”
He also said, “I believe a regular dialogue is extremely important between the two countries.”
Other members of the delegation were veteran diplomat Ashok K. Kantha, a former Indian ambassador to China, Sonu Trivedi, a distinguished fellow at the think tank, and senior research fellow Siddharth Singh.
A Chinese government official confirmed the visit. “The think tank delegation from India Foundation recently visited China. They were in Lhasa, too.”
After coming back to India, the India Foundation delegation also visited Dharamsala to meet representatives of the Tibetan government-in-exile or the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA). The think tank delegation was led by former Union minister Suresh Prabhu.
Last year, India Foundation had hosted the Chinese delegation in Delhi, and also taken them to Kushinagar, a popular Buddhist pilgrimage site in Uttar Pradesh.
India-China Rapprochement
On December 18, India and China held the stalled special representative (SR) dialogue after a gap of five years. The meeting was held in Beijing, between National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, who is also India’s Special Representative for the India-China Boundary Question, and Wang Yi, Chinese Special Representative, member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, and Minister of Foreign Affairs.
The SR dialogue came amid a growing rapprochement between the two countries. During the meeting, both sides reached a six-point consensus, which primarily included taking effective measures to maintain peace at the borders and promote healthy and stable development of relations.
The SRs also discussed cross-border cooperation and exchanges, including resumption of the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra, data-sharing on trans-border rivers, and border trade.
Prior to the meeting between the two SRs, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar met his Chinese counterpart in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in November. Both ministers agreed to not only focus on bringing normalcy back in the ties, but to also chalk out the “next steps” in the bilateral relationship.
The next steps included resumption of the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra pilgrimage, data sharing on trans-border rivers, direct flights between India and China, and media exchanges.
After a period of lull and intense tensions in ties, the ball on normalcy was set rolling when Chinese President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a bilateral meeting in October on the margins of the BRICS Summit 2024 in Kazan, Russia. This was the first meeting between the two leaders in 5 years.
“Mutual trust, mutual respect, and mutual sensitivity should continue to be the basis of our relations. Today, we have got an opportunity to discuss all these issues. I am confident that we will talk with an open mind, and our discussion will be constructive,” Modi told Xi during the bilateral meeting.
On October 21, India and China arrived at a patrolling arrangement, under which troops on both sides of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) were allowed to patrol the critical areas of Demchok and Depsang Plains in the eastern Ladakh sector of the de-facto border.
This recent détente also saw exchange of sweets between the Indian Army and the People’s Liberation Army of China on the occasion of Diwali.
Both sides are now engaged in talks to settle the matter concerning the buffer zones, or de-militarised zones, that came up in eastern Ladakh in 2022, when the first phase of disengagement took place in the Galwan Valley, Gogra Hot Springs and Pangong Lake areas. According to the current arrangement, none of the sides can carry out patrolling in these zones, nor can India allow its graziers to take their livestock in these areas.
At present, nearly 1,00,000 troops each from both sides continue to be deployed on the border. India ramped up its troop presence in the eastern Ladakh sector after the Galwan clash of June 2020, when 20 of its soldiers were killed in an attack by the Chinese PLA.