China, India foreign ministers agree to ease border tensions at in-person Russia meet

Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi and his Indian counterpart Subrahmanyam Jaishankar met for the first time in months at a summit held in Russia
They agreed in a joint statement that both sides ‘should abide by the existing border affairs agreements’, maintain peace and avoid escalatory actions

China-India border dispute

Bloomberg

Published: 8:39am, 11 Sep 2020

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India and China pledged to de-escalate tensions along their disputed Himalayan border after their foreign ministers met on Thursday for the first time since the stand-off turned deadly.

Foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi agreed that “the current situation in the border area is not in the interests of both sides,” they said in a joint statement after meeting on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Moscow organised by Russia.

‘Narrow opportunity’ for China and India to cool border tensions

The nations “should abide by the existing border affairs agreements and regulations, maintain peace and tranquillity in the border areas, and avoid any actions that may escalate the situation,” they said.

India and China have been increasing their troop strength along the 3,488-kilometer (2,167-mile) border known as the Line of Actual Control since May. The military stand-off, in which gun shots were fired this week for the first time since 1975, remains unresolved despite multiple rounds of negotiations between military commanders and diplomats and two phone calls between Wang and Jaishankar.

Indian army vehicles move along a highway leading to Ladakh, near the border with China. Photo: EPA

The latest skirmishes came just days after Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and his Chinese counterpart, General Wei Fenghe, agreed to ease tensions after “frank and in-depth discussions” in Moscow.

It has led to deteriorating economic ties, with India limiting Chinese investments, tightening scrutiny on visas and moving to keep Huawei Technologies out of 5G networks. India last week banned 118 Chinese apps including Tencent’s popular game PUBG Mobile Lite and payments service Alipay, following up on its June ban of several applications including ByteDance’s viral short-video service TikTok.

02:04

New video shows clash between Indian and Chinese troops on border

Differences worsened after India, in its first offensive move since the conflict began, moved thousands of soldiers to mountain peaks to claim vantage points along the south bank of Pangong Tso – a glacial lake roughly the size of Singapore – to counter what it views as an intrusion by Chinese forces.

The decision to capture high ground that was previously unoccupied revived tensions that had cooled since June when 20 Indian soldiers and an unknown number of Chinese troops were killed in brutal hand-to-hand combat.

“The two foreign ministers agreed that as the situation eases, the two sides should speed up the completion of new mutual trust-building measures to maintain and enhance peace and tranquillity in the border area,” they said in the joint statement.

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