New Delhi: After Beijing has taken certain actions in violation of the agreement between India and China, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Friday said that the ties between India and China at the border seems to go through a “particularly bad patch.” He further said that China has "no credible explanation" regarding these violations.
While addressing the panel “Greater Power Competition: The Emerging World Order” at the Bloomberg New Economic Forum in Singapore, Jaishankar said, "I don’t think the Chinese have any doubt on where we stand on our relationship and what’s not gone right with it. I’ve been meeting my counterpart Wang Yi a number of times. As you would’ve experienced, I speak fairly clear, reasonably understandably (and) there is no lack of clarity so if they want to hear it, I am sure they would have heard it."
“We are going through a particularly bad patch in our relationship because they have taken a set of actions in violation of agreements for which they still don’t have a credible explanation and that indicates some rethink about where they want to take our relationship, but that’s for them to answer,” External Affairs Minister was quoted by PTI in its report.
Earlier on May 5 last year, the stand-off between Indian and Chinese forces erupted following the violent clash in the Pangong lake areas thus leading to the heavy deployment of armed forces at both sides of the border.
Followed by the deadly clash in Galwan valley on June 15, the tension between Indian and Chinese militaries escalated.
With a series of military and diplomatic talks between the two countries, the disengagement process was able to complete in the north and south banks of the Pangong lake in February and in the Gogra area in August last year.
On Thursday, both sides came together to amicably get to a resolution and thus complete the disengagement process in the remaining volatile areas along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Eastern Ladakh.
“It’s clear China has been expanding. But the nature of China, the manner of its growing influence is very different. And we don’t have a situation where China necessarily replaces the United States. Well, it’s natural to think of China, the US (and) China as the overarching happening. The fact is, there are also a lot of other countries including India, which have come much more into play. There’s been a rebalancing in the world,” Jaishankar added.
(With inputs from PTI)