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Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, India’s minister of external affairs, attends a news conference of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in Goa on Friday. Photo: AFP
China

China and India diverge on border dispute status after foreign ministers meeting

  • Sino-Indian relations ‘cannot be normal if peace and tranquillity’ in border areas is disturbed, says New Delhi’s top diplomat at regional conference
  • Subrahmanyam Jaishankar challenges Chinese readout claiming situation in disputed region is ‘generally stable’
China-India relations
Khushboo Razdan
Khushboo Razdanin New York
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China and India appeared far apart in how they assess their long-simmering border dispute as a foreign ministers’ meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) ended on Friday with both sides pledging to continue their dialogue.
Sino-Indian relations were “not normal and cannot be normal if peace and tranquillity in the border areas is disturbed”, said Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar at the close of the two-day regional diplomatic conference in Goa.

He was responding to a question about a Chinese foreign ministry readout, also released on Friday, claiming the situation at the China-India border was “generally stable”.

“My understanding of what the Chinese said, I think they used the word stable. I don’t think that’s the issue. I think the issue is that there is an abnormal position in border areas along the boundary,” Jaishankar said.

Tensions have stayed high along the 3,000km-plus frontier lining some of the most inhospitable stretches of the Himalayas following a fatal fist fight in 2020 that led to the deaths of at least 20 Indian and four Chinese men.

More than 17 rounds of bilateral military and diplomatic talks have taken place over the past two years. The Indian side has described the situation at the border as “quite dangerous”.

Jaishankar said his meeting on Friday with his counterpart, Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang, was their second one-on-one conversation in the last two months.

“We had a very frank discussion,” he said, adding: “I had spoken to Mr Qin on the sidelines of the G20 as well. So we have to take the disengagement process forward”.

China-India relations: Qin Gang pledges better dialogue to improve ties

Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to visit New Delhi in July for the SCO summit. To date, nothing has been said about a possible bilateral meeting between Xi and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
It would be Xi’s first visit to India since 2019. The two leaders met in Bali, Indonesia, on the margins of the Group of 20 summit in November last year.
While the two neighbouring countries have been wary of each other for decades, India’s recent closeness to the US to counter Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific region has made Beijing uneasy.
At the SCO foreign ministers’ meeting, Qin urged South and Central Asian nations to maintain their “strategic autonomy”.

China-India ties depend on border peace: Indian defence minister

The SCO is an eight-member, inter-governmental Eurasian grouping founded in 2001 by China and Russia, along with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, to offset Western influence in the region. India and Pakistan joined it in 2017.

Speaking about chairing a group perceived as anti-Western, Jaishankar said: “We are members of SCO because it serves India’s interest.”

A “multi- dimensional” foreign policy was crucial in today’s “very fluid, multipolar, and sometimes uncertain, volatile world”, he added.

India’s top diplomat said he took the opportunity of the SCO meeting to reiterate New Delhi’s displeasure over the US$65 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which passes through the disputed Kashmir region.

“I think it was made very clear, not once but twice in the SCO meeting, that connectivity is good for progress,” he said. “But connectivity cannot violate the territorial integrity and sovereignty of states.”

CPEC forms part of the Belt and Road Initiative, a Chinese global infrastructure project launched in 2013. Under CPEC, begun in 2015, several port projects remain pending.

Since India’s partition at the end of British colonial rule and the creation of Pakistan in 1947, the South Asian nations have remained at loggerheads over the sovereignty of Kashmir, a region that each country claims as its own.

India is slated to host the G20 summit between May 22 and 24 in Kashmir – a plan Pakistan opposes. In the latest evidence of bilateral acrimony, Pakistani Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari refused to sit for a chat with his Indian counterpart during the SCO meeting.

“Pakistan’s credibility is depleting even faster than its forex reserves” Jaishankar quipped on Friday, referring to the struggles of its foreign exchange market.

The SCO meeting, Jaishankar said, was not meant to be treated as anything more than a platform for “multilateral diplomacy”.

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