It can now be said without fear of contradiction that a Sino-Indian rapprochement is well and tuly under way. In June 2020, when border clashes occurred in the Himalayas and India lost 25 of its soldiers, the relationship between the two countries sunk to an all time low. It broke a long and uninterrupted peace maintained at the border for 45 long years. The incident led to mutual recrimination with both sides accusing each other of having broken bilateral agreements to maintain peace and tranquility at the border. A period of chill followed with no top level meetings between the leaders and specific measures taken which adversely affected people-to-people ties, air connectivity, trade and investment. This Sino-Indian estrangement also spilled over into multilateral fora like the UN, WTO, BRICS, UNFCCC and SCO.
The first sign of Sino-Indian thaw was the famous “pull aside” between PM Modi and President Xi at the Bali G20 Summit in November 2022. The move for this initial rapprochement was ostensibly made by China. While the “pull aside” meeting happened in November 2022, the Chinese Foreign Ministry talked about it for the first time only in July 2023 and stated that Prime Minister Modi and President Xi Jinping had reached a significant “consensus” on stabilizing India-China bilateral relations during the G20 meeting in Bali back in November 2022. According to the Chinese statement, both sides reaffirmed their commitment to not posing a threat to each other and recognized each other’s development opportunities. The statement went on to say that the focus was on implementing this consensus into specific policies and actions across various departments to foster strategic mutual trust and cooperation. The ultimate goal, the statement concluded, was to steer India-China relations back to a path of healthy and stable development at the earliest. The Indian side, taken somewhat by surprise, sheepishly clarified the situation in a media briefing, confirming that both Prime Minister Modi and President Xi Jinping exchanged pleasantries and spoke about the need to stabilize the bilateral relations during a dinner hosted by the Indonesian President on the margins of the G20 Summit.
Yet another meeting between Modi and XI took place on the margins of the BRICS meeting in Johannesburg in August 2023. The Chinese said this time that the meeting was requested by the Indian side. Be that as it may, the two leaders appear to have agreed in principle to “de-escalate” border tensions. This was a clear message from the two leaders to the ground level negotiators.
Following this, a flurry of meetings happened in late 2024 and early 2025 between Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi and Minister Jaishankar as well as the National Security Adviser Ajit Doval. In September 2024, Minister Jaishankar said, to the mild surprise of observers, that India has made progress in its border negotiations with China with about 75% of disengagement problems sorted out. In October 2024, there was a full fledged meeting between Modi and Xi on the margins of the BRICS summit meeting in Kazan, Russia and they welcomed steps to resume dialogue between their countries. The two leaders appear to have agreed to boost cooperation and resolve differences betweeen their respective countries.
By December 2024, when the National Security Adviser Ajit Doval met Foreign Minister Wang Yi, the time was ripe for some kind of understanding. So, it was no surprise when announcement was made on a six point consensus, which was put out by the chinese side first:
>Positively evaluated the resolution in eastern Ladakh and agreed to work for peace on the ground
> Commitment for a fair, reasonable, and mutually acceptable package solution on the border issue
> Strengthen confidence building measures
>Resume Kailash Yatra, river cooperation and border trade
>Strengthen SRs (Special Representatives) mechanism , diplomatic and military talks mechanism
> SRs to meet again in India in 2025
The latest phase in this saga relates to PM Modi’s podcast to Lex Friedman and his remarks on Sino-Indian ties. While underlining that both China and India were ancient civilisational states, PM said that they had always learnt from each other. Remarkably, PM Modi says that if you look back several centuries, there was really no history of conflict between the two countries. By choosing to take a long view of bilateral ties and not focus on the 1962 Sino-Indian war or the Ladakh incidents of 2020, was the PM trying to send a message? He nevertheless acknowedged that differences were common between neighbours and even within a family. He said India’s objective was to ensure that competition between India and China, which was natural, did not veer into conflict. Predictably, the Chinese foreign office spokesperson enthusiastically welcomed the remarks of PM Modi and reciprocated the sentiment to work for stronger bilateral cooperation.
The most difficult question to answer at this stage is why China chose initial rapprochement with India and why India seems to have grabbed it with both hands. It is interesting that a lot of these diplomatic moves were made before it was clear that Trump would be the next President of the United States. So, prima facie, Trump was not the main reason.
Firstly, from China’s perspective it is hard to avoid the impression that this was “course correction” on their part after the bloody events of Ladakh in June 2020. China is now a leading military power and it beggars belief that India would attack it with a view to gaining territory. That might explain a lot. Second, it is in China’s abiding interest to have suitably normal ties with India, while it concentrates its efforts on meeting its main strategic challenge: the United States and the West. Third, it is now well known that India would have most certainly allowed Huawei and China significant access to the huge Indian market for 5G and data, if Ladakh had not intervened. While China remains a vastly superior economic and technological power, the lure of the Indian market cannot be overlooked, especially if US and EU start restriciting entry of Chinese products and services into their markets. Fourth, India is the only neighbouring country with which China has not settled its land border. Again, it would be in China’s strategic interest to do so, since that will free up its resources for more existential objectives like South China Sea or even Taiwan. Last, it is not in China’s interest to have India as America’s cat’s paw in the Indo-Pacific, regardless of India’s unwillingness to be one. Good ties with India can serve this strategic objective of China’s.
From India’s perspective, the reasons for rapprochement with China are not far to seek. First among the reasons would be the Sino-Russian entente and the consequent diminution in India’s strategic space. A head-on clash with China would not help matters for India in this regard. Second and quite bluntly, India cannot afford a long war of attrition on its border with China. Indeed, India will seek to remove the large number of Chinese and Indian troops on both sides of the border asap. It is only then that full normalcy can be declared by both sides. Third, even during Biden’s time the US had a dualism to its China policy. A part of the US deep state was confrontational vis-a-vis China considering it as a “pacing challenge”. Another part felt that the US should cooperate with China where possible and manage its rise. This has accentuated under Trump who actually embodies this dualism and is yet to decide which side of the argument he will fall. With this in mind, India appears to have enthusiastically welcomed the thaw in ties with China. Fourth, there has also been a fair amount of pressure from our economic operators about loosening the restrictions placed on our trade and economic ties with China. Policy makers, expecially in eocnomic ministries, have also argued for encouraging selective Chinese investment as being essential for India’s development. Lastly, what China and India are doing is really strategic hedging of their respective bets. You can be sure other countries are doing exactly the same, leading to multiple strategic hedging as a policy to counter geopolitical turbulence.
There is just one other matter which needs emphasis. India has stated emphatically that full normalisation of bilateral ties in all areas, depends on normalcy at the border. It is of course for India (and China) to decide what constitutes normalcy at the border. PM Modi in his podcast says that both countries are working to restore ties to what they were before 2020. That should give us an idea of what India is thinking about. China may or may not necessarily see things this way. One way of breaking this logjam is to have a roadmap with clear benchmarks for resolution of the border “package” with definitive timelines. Simultaneously, there can also be a roadmap for restoration of full normalcy in trade, investment, connectivity, people-to-people relations in bilateral ties. These two roadmaps can run in parallel. The fact is the border issue has poisoned bilateral ties for too long and cannot be left for the next generation of Indians and Chinese to resolve. China as the bigger and more powerful neighbour should summon the necessary political will and take the initiative on the border issue. At the end of the day, that alone will be the most important confidence building measure in the chequered history of the Dragon and the Elephant.
Diplomacy and Geopolitics 