Beijing, China: After the successful round of bilateral talks between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Narendra Modi last month, held after a gap of five years, New Delhi and Beijing should focus on bringing the relationship back to normalcy, a senior Chinese Foreign Ministry official has said. India and China, the official added, should not allow the border issue to “hijack” the entire relationship.
The official also said Beijing is hopeful that Prime Minister Modi will be visiting China next year to attend the summit meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). China is the next chair of SCO.
The fact that both sides did not speak to each other for over four years even as they heavily deployed their troops at the Line of Actual Control (LAC) “does not look good”, and gives the rest of the world “an opportunity to laugh at us", the official, based in Beijing, said while addressing a group of Indian journalists visiting China, days after the leaders of both countries met in Russia.
“The border issue is important for both countries but it cannot be allowed to hijack the entire relationship, which has so much potential. The talks in Kazan showed how the bilateral relationship is going in the positive way. However, the border issue has to be resolved at a faster pace. Once the process of disengagement is over, more steps have to be implemented,” the official said.
PM Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping held formal bilateral talks, for the first time since 2019, on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit in Kazan, Russia, on October 24, 2024. During the meeting, both leaders directed their foreign ministers as well as Special Representatives (SR) on the Boundary Question to meet on a regular basis.
The SRs are expected to meet by December to restart talks concerning the LAC. According to the joint statement issued after the leaders met, the SRs will be meeting “to oversee the management of peace & tranquility in border areas and to explore a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable solution to the boundary question. The relevant dialogue mechanisms at the level of foreign ministers and other officials will also be utilised to stabilise and rebuild bilateral relations.”
The special representatives' talks on the boundary question, popularly known as the SR-level dialogue mechanism, was institutionalised in 2003 after former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's visit to China. India’s SR is National Security Adviser (NSA) Ajit Doval. His Chinese counterpart is Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who is also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee.
According to the official quoted above, Beijing believes the Modi-Xi bilateral talks have once again taken the relationship to a certain “strategic height".
China Continues To Believe In ‘1959 Claim Line’
The official also stressed that India and China cannot afford to go to war, and, therefore, need to reassess each other’s perceptions of the border. The official said while India follows three lines – the McMahon Line and the LAC and the line where the Indian troops are currently stationed – China only follows one, the ‘1959 claim line’.
“For us, the line has always been the one that was proposed by Premier Zhou Enlai. For us that is the line,” the official said. Despite this belief, the official added, Beijing is willing to have a dialogue mechanism with India in order to maintain peace and tranquility at the border areas.
The 1959 line is the one that was mentioned in a letter from Zhou to the then Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, where he proposed that India withdraw 20 km from the McMahon Line. India had rejected the line and eventually both sides went to war in 1962.
The term LAC was first used in the ‘Agreement on the Maintenance of Peace and Tranquility along the LAC in the India-China Border Areas’ that was signed by both countries in 1993.
“The two sides should work together to avoid stand-off, and exercise restraint. We need to consider how to return to the existing border protocols,” the official added.
‘Resume Direct Flights, Enhance Visas, Lift Ban On Apps’
According to the official, as the first step towards normalising the relationship, India and China should look at enhancing people-to-people links by way of greater issuance of visas, especially for businessmen, and resuming direct flights between both countries.
The official said Beijing is planning to soon allow Indian pilgrims to use the official routes for the Kailash-Mansarovar pilgrimage, which the Chinese government closed in 2020 ostensibly due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
These steps should be taken as per the confidence-building measures between the two countries.
The official added that China is offering long-term visas for Indian businessmen, and New Delhi should take reciprocal steps.
“We would also like to urge the Government of India to remove the ban on Chinese apps,” the official said, adding that a new Chinese video game named ‘Black Myth: Wukong’ "featuring Hindu god Hanuman should be promoted among the younger generation in India".
The official also rued the fact that while Indian Bollywood films are shown in China, and they also enjoy a considerable viewership, Chinese movies that hardly find any space in India.
China, the official added, is facing certain economic challenges and is thus planning to open up to the world by taking a quantum leap. This is why the Chinese government has given several countries visa-free access.