Indian foreign minister says goal is to bring relations with China ‘back to normal’
- Subrahmanyam Jaishankar says it is in the mutual interest of New Delhi and Beijing to find a way to accommodate each other despite a long-running border dispute
- He is scheduled to attend the BRICS foreign ministers’ meeting on Thursday, but not to speak personally with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi
The relationship between China and India is not “normal” for “reasons well known”, Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar acknowledged on Wednesday at a Columbia University event in New York. He said it was India’s foreign policy focus to bring the ties with China “back to normal”.
The countries remain locked in a border dispute dating back to the 1962 Indo-China war. Although troops have begun to disengage after two years of talks since the May 2020 border clashes that killed at least 11 Indian and four Chinese soldiers, the situation remains tense and uncertain.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping held two informal summits in 2018 and 2019. But the bonhomie came to sudden halt after the bloody skirmishes in 2020.
Last week, Modi and Xi were seen ignoring each other during a photo-op at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.
Christopher Clary, a professor of international affairs at the University of Albany in New York, said that New Delhi was facing “muted but real criticism” for its recent pullback along the border.