Both sides have released an Eight Point Consensus, listing several ambitious outcomes. The full text follows below. It has been put out by India’s MEA and by China’s MFA. As you will note, it includes a reference to talks on an “early and substantial harvest” in boundary delimitation. There are other outcomes as well, such as holding a meeting next month on trans-border rivers and setting up additional meeting points and hotlines on the border.

Here is the full text:

Eight Points of Outcomes and Consensus for the 25th round of Talks between Special Representatives of India and China on the Boundary Question

On August 25, 2026, the 25th Round of Talks between the Special Representatives (SR) of India and China on the Boundary Question was held in Beijing, China. HE Wang Yi, Special Representative of China, Member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Director of the Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs, and HE Ajit Doval, Special Representative of India and National Security Adviser, had a candid and in-depth exchange of views on the India-China boundary question and reached eight points of outcomes and consensus as follows:

1. The two sides reaffirmed their commitment to uphold the guidance received from the leaders of the two countries, maintain peace and tranquility in the border areas and create an atmosphere for healthy and steady development of bilateral relations.

2. The two sides underlined their commitment to advancing negotiations on a framework for the settlement of the boundary question in accordance with the Agreement on Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for Settlement of the India-China Boundary Question signed in 2005 and the consensus reached in subsequent SR Talks in pursuit of a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable solution.

3. The Expert Group on Boundary Delimitation and Working Group on Border Management under the WMCC would respectively advance discussions on an Early and Substantial Harvest of boundary delimitation and Border Management. The first task for both these groups would be to agree on their respective Terms of Reference.

4. The two sides agreed that any situation on the ground would be addressed promptly through existing diplomatic and military channels, including the WMCC, local commander‑level meetings and other agreed mechanisms, to resolve outstanding issues and avoid misunderstanding and miscalculation along the LAC. The two sides discussed ways to improve understanding of LAC in appropriate areas, for better border management.

5. With the objective to improve the border management measures, an additional two meeting points were agreed for holding the General Level Mechanism/ Senior Highest Military Commander meeting (SHMC). Similarly two additional channels of border military hotline in the Eastern and Middle Sectors were agreed.

6. Both sides noted the progress on trans-border cooperation. The Indian side appreciated the efforts made by the Chinese side to increase the number of batches of Indian official pilgrimage Kailash-Manasarovar Yatra (KMY) in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China. Both sides appreciated the reopening of the three designated border trading points. The two sides agreed to strengthen exchanges and cooperation in border trade, pilgrimage and other areas, with the view to work together to create an atmosphere featuring dialogue, peace, consultation and cooperation the border areas.

7. The two sides agreed to hold the next meeting of the India-China Expert-Level Mechanism on Trans-border Rivers in September and maintain communication on issues including hydrological data sharing, and renewal of the relevant MoUs.

8. The two sides agreed to hold the 26th round of SR Talks in India in 2027.

A few brief thoughts: If some thought the reference to an “early harvest” last year was unrealistic, both sides have doubled down on that ambition. We now have an “early and substantial harvest”. As Point #3 notes though, the Expert Group, which both sides agreed to set up in August 2025, will first begin with the task of agreeing terms of reference, so one would think this is a long road ahead. Point #6 on trans-border cooperation does indeed put forth a lofty ambition: “to work together to create an atmosphere featuring dialogue, peace, consultation and cooperation in the border areas.”

Thank you for reading.

Here is a full guide to what each side said and what the takeaways are. Doval also met Vice President Han Zheng, but the meat of the visit was the talks with Wang Yi.

UPDATE: A day after the talks, India and China released an Eight Point Consensus on the boundary question. I’ve written about it here.

The big picture: Stability and not settlement, even if that’s technically the actual mandate of the SRs. As Doval and Wang said, in different ways, the immediate task for both sides is to continue what they’ve been doing to maintain peace and tranquility, and to explore further ways to ensure that task remains manageable, given that it’s the prerequisite for what both call a ‘steadily normalising’ relationship; and secondly, to ensure the conditions are right for next month’s expected visit to India by President Xi, which, though for the BRICS Summit, will be significant as the first in seven years.

The talks happened at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing, which is always a treat to visit:

Wang and Doval first met in a smaller group for between one-and-a-half to two hours. After that, they headed over to a larger room for formal delegation level talks. Journalists weren’t allowed into the small group session, but were permitted to listen to their opening remarks before the start of the second session. The theatre of opening welcoming remarks is quite funny given both had already spent quite a bit of time in each other’s company, but it’s a bit of kabuki for the media. Still, it’s also important as it shows what each side wants to highlight publically.

Opening Remarks from Wang Yi

Welcome to China to chair with me the 25th round of talks between the Special Representatives. China and India are each other’s important neighbours. They are both major developing countries and important emerging economies. A sound and steadily growing China-India relationship serves the fundamental interests of our two peoples, meets the common expectations of the Global South countries, and also meets the trend of the times.

The China India relationship has gone beyond the bilateral scope and taken on global and strategic significance. It is important for us to step up communication, to enhance mutual trust, to remove disturbances and overcome obstacles. We need to be good friends that enjoy good neighbourliness and be good partners that contribute to each other’s success.

In recent years, President Xi and Prime Minister Modi have held two important meetings in Kazan and Tianjin. Our leaders reached important common understandings and charted the direction for the improvement and growth of our bilateral relationship. Under the guidance of our leaders, you and I have had two SR talks, the institutional mechanisms between our two counties have been resuming and we have been working hard to maintain peace and tranquility in the border areas.

The two sides have stayed in regular communication through diplomatic and military channels on boundary affairs. In our SR meeting last year, the 24th one, you and I reached a set of common understandings on delimitation, on border management, mechanism-building and cross-border cooperation. Over the past year, our two sides have worked to deliver them on the ground and have made good progress. With this meeting, I look forward to continue to have in-depth exchange of views with you on issues of shared interest to better understand each other and to properly handle the boundary question, to not only maintain peace and tranquility in the border areas but also inject new impetus for the bilateral relationship. For our small group meeting just now, we had very in depth and candid discussions. For our big group meeting, I am sure we will have new consensus.

Opening Remarks from Doval

Thank you very much for the great hospitality and all the arrangements. I am very happy we are here for the 25th round of talks, which are very important particularly in the wake of the BRICS summit to happen shortly.

We meet in keeping with the guidance of our leaders Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping who have given clear and positive direction to our relationship both at Kazan and Tianjin. I am happy over the past year our relationship has been steadily returning to normalcy. The normalcy we have witnessed in our relationship has been a direct result of both sides maintaining peace and tranquility in the border areas. We have extensively talked about it today just to see how effectively to reinforce and further consolidate our efforts to maintain peace and tranquility in the border areas.

The successful conduct of the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra through Nathu La and Lipulekh, and the resumption of our traditional border trade through three passes has brought tangible benefits for our people particularly people living in the border areas.

(Media ushered out while Doval continued to speak).

On Tuesday evening, the Indian Embassy in Beijing put out this statement:

NSA Shri Ajit Doval co-chaired the 25th Meeting of SRs on India-China Boundary Question with his counterpart H. E. Wang Yi, Member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPC and China’s Foreign Minister on 25 August 2026 in Beijing. The two sides positively reviewed the ongoing momentum in bilateral relations which is in line with the directions and vision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping. They discussed ways to further expand bilateral cooperation, maintain stability and ensure peace and tranquility in the border areas, and make progress on boundary delimitation, while sustaining the ongoing work on transboundary cooperation.

Later, the Ministry of External Affairs put out a slightly lengthier statement in New Delhi, but without some of those details such as the two sides discussing ways to maintain peace and make progress on boundary delimitation (which I thought was a bit odd).

1. At the invitation of Mr. Wang Yi, Member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, National Security Advisor and Special Representative of India on India-China Boundary Question, Shri Ajit Doval visited Beijing between 24-25 August 2026.
2. During the visit, the two Special Representatives co-chaired the 25th round of the Special Representatives’ Talks on the India-China Boundary Question.
3. The two sides noted the progress made in implementing the important consensus reached between their leaders in Kazan in October 2024 and Tianjin in August 2025. Both sides expressed satisfaction at the steady resumption of people-to-people and cross-border exchanges, including the ongoing Kailash Manasarovar Yatra and Border Trade through the three designated border trading passes.
4. Under the strategic guidance of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping, and in a constructive and forward-looking spirit, the two Special Representatives had a candid and in-depth exchange of views on the India-China Boundary Question, and agreed to continue their work in seeking a political settlement of the boundary question in the context of their overall and long-term interests.
5. The Indian side highlighted the importance of maintaining peace and tranquility in the India-China border areas for the continued development and progress of the bilateral relationship.
6. The two sides also discussed bilateral, regional and international issues of mutual interest.
7. NSA Shri Ajit Doval also called on Chinese Vice-President Han Zheng during the visit.

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs put out a more detailed readout, which repeated most of Wang’s opening remarks, but added an interesting paragraph at the very end (translated):

Wang Yi stated that China and India are important neighbours to each other, as well as major developing countries and representatives of emerging economies. A sound and stable China‑India relationship serves the fundamental interests of the two peoples, meets the shared aspirations of Global South countries, and conforms to the trend of our times. Going far beyond a bilateral dimension, China‑India ties carry global and strategic significance. China stands ready to work with India to guide bilateral relations from a strategic and long‑term perspective, enhance communication, deepen mutual understanding, resolve differences, overcome obstacles, become good‑neighbourly friends and mutually‑beneficial partners, and achieve the “Dragon‑Elephant Dance”.

Wang Yi noted that both sides are implementing the outcomes of the Special Representatives’ meetings in an orderly fashion. Institutionalised exchanges and cooperation between the two nations have gradually resumed, with both sides committed to safeguarding peace and tranquillity in the border areas. Drawing on historical experience, the two countries should place the boundary question in its proper position within bilateral relations, keep moving forward without stagnation, backsliding or deviation. They should gradually build a positive narrative on China‑India border‑related affairs, make dialogue, peace, consultation and cooperation the mainstream, and inject positive momentum into the healthy and steady growth of bilateral ties.

Doval said India and China, two ancient civilisations and large‑population major economies, are partners, not competitors. A stable, predictable and forward‑looking India‑China relationship is in the common interests of both peoples and carries great importance for Asia and the wider world. Guided by the leaders of the two countries, India‑China relations are getting back on track, the border areas remain generally peaceful, and exchanges and cooperation across all sectors are advancing steadily. India is willing to strengthen strategic communication with China, expand mutually‑beneficial cooperation, deepen multilateral coordination, manage border‑related issues effectively, explore solutions to the boundary question and accelerate the improvement of India‑China relations.

The two sides held in‑depth discussions on advancing delimitation negotiations, strengthening border management and control, improving mechanism‑building and promoting cross‑border cooperation. They reaffirmed their commitment to the 2005 Political Guiding Principles, and, in a spirit of mutual respect and mutual understanding, will leverage the Special Representatives’ mechanism to pursue a fair, reasonable and mutually‑acceptable package solution to the boundary question. Both countries will continue to settle border‑related issues through dialogue and consultation, and jointly uphold peace and tranquillity along the border. The two sides agreed that the 26th Meeting of the Special Representatives on the China‑India Boundary Question will be held in India in 2027. The two sides also exchanged views on international and regional issues of common concern.

Five brief points from me: What do we make of these references to border delimitation, in the absence of any concrete information? Are these throwaway remarks or something else? There are more unknowns than knowns, but I offer my penny’s worth:

1. It’s interesting that Wang Yi made a specific mention of this in his remarks to the press, saying, as mentioned above: “In our SR meeting last year, the 24th one, you and I reached a set of common understandings on delimitation, on border management, mechanism-building and cross-border cooperation. Over the past year, our two sides have worked to deliver them on the ground and have made good progress.” Doval made no mention of this.

2. Neither side mentioned the phrase ‘early harvest’ that figured in the statement after the previous round, where they both agreed on setting up an Expert Group under the WMCC “to explore Early Harvest in boundary delimitation in the India-China border areas”. That being said, the statements also did not mention, as they did last year, any reference to the creation of General Level Mechanisms in Eastern and Middle Sectors. Whether seeking an early harvest is off the agenda or whether both see no value (or even some risk) in publicly referring to it again is unclear, although it would be odd for both to refer to making progress on talks on border delimitation if those talks weren’t happening at all. How much progress they’ve made is another question.

3. We don’t know if the Expert Group under the WMCC has met (note - it’s separate from the SRs track), although Wang referred to ‘good progress’ having been made (leaving unclear which part of his statement he was referring to - delimitation or management of the boundary or mechanism-building, or all of the above).

4. The Chinese Foreign Ministry statement referred to both sides “pursuing a fair, reasonable and mutually‑acceptable package solution to the boundary question”. Seeking a “package solution”, as opposed to piecemeal settlements, was what was previously agreed to. It’s not immediately clear to me if both sides see a package solution and delimitation agreements as being contradictory. The border has never been demarcated. But the entire border is not disputed. They could delimit areas while leaving the major disputes for a package solution. What that would serve I’m not entirely sure. Can a case be made for there being a psychological benefit to it and the signal that sends publically? Or, on the other hand, are both leaders interested in showing there’s progress, ie, the optics, even if when it comes to the actual disputes, there is none (and indeed, if they are getting more acute)?

5. Finally, the fact that I’m leaving these questions unanswered goes to show that India and China are singing from the same hymn sheet in their view that revealing less is better, which is why we have close to no insight into what’s actually transpired on the ground in the one year between the 24th round and the 25th round. Both sides speak of progress - and the borders clearly appear to be stable for the most part — yet we don’t know what that progress in managing the borders actually is.

Given the recent history - and both of their understandable wishes to keep a lid on increasingly inflamed public opinion on both sides where any agreement is seen, unfortunately and in my view unreasonably, as a concession - one can even see where they’re coming from. Yet, in the long term, if they are serious about making meaningful progress on the boundary question, whether in coming up with more robust mechanisms in managing it, or even in beginning to try and resolve it as unlikely as that may seem, at some point India and China are going to have to start communicating a lot more with their publics.

Thank you for reading.

His visit to Beijing is significant in at least two ways: on managing the Line of Actual Control (LAC) itself, but also laying the groundwork for President Xi’s visit to Delhi, expected on September 12 for the BRICS Summit.

Ahead of today’s talks, I spoke with Hu Shisheng, who in my view is one of the most informed scholars in Beijing when it comes to India-China relations, and China’s diplomacy in South Asia more broadly.

Hu shared his thoughts briefly on the border talks and what they can meaningfully achieve.

He also had this to say on the broader state of relations in this current phase of gradual normalisation:

As for the broader normalisation, I would describe it as strategic risk management rather than strategic realignment. Recent difficulties in India-U.S. relations may give New Delhi greater incentives to diversify its strategic options, while the relative stabilisation of China-U.S. ties reduces some of the external pressure on China-India relations. But the structural differences between China and India have not disappeared. What we are seeing is an attempt to build a more stable form of competitive coexistence – keeping the border peaceful, restoring practical cooperation, and expanding coordination through BRICS and the Global South without pretending that strategic competition no longer exists.

You can read the full interview here.

The newsletter will be back with the outcomes of the talks.

Thank you for reading!

There have been signs for some time now that things aren’t quiet on the Eastern Sector of the India-China border in Arunachal Pradesh, although there’s been little in the way of official information. This image has been doing the rounds:

Below, a helpful post on where this is happening in Upper Subansiri district, in an area with historically different perceptions of the Line of Actual Control:

Asked today (Aug 11) at a weekly press briefing, India’s Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson didn’t deny the reports. He said India had, in its talks with China, always conveyed it takes border issues with utmost seriousness, and had underlined at the recent meeting of the border working mechanism (WMCC) - more on that later - that peace and tranquility is the prerequisite for good relations. He gave no details on the incident - a pity, but unsurprising - but reading between the lines of what he said, something definitely is up.

Here is the readout from the August 6 meeting of the WMCC, which took place in New Delhi:

The Ministry of External Affairs on Friday said India and China have agreed to continue using existing diplomatic and military channels to resolve outstanding border issues and avoid misunderstanding along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). The announcement was made following the 36th meeting of the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination (WMCC) on India-China Border Affairs.

The meeting was held in New Delhi on Thursday, with the Indian delegation led by Sujit Ghosh, Joint Secretary (East Asia) at the MEA, and the Chinese delegation led by Hou Yanqi, Director General of the Boundary and Oceanic Affairs Department at China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

In an official statement, the MEA said, “The two sides engaged in frank discussions and reviewed the situation along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). Further, it was underlined that maintaining peace and tranquillity in the border areas is essential for the overall development of bilateral relations.” “Both sides agreed to continue to use existing diplomatic and military channels, including the WMCC, local commander-level meetings and other agreed mechanisms, to resolve outstanding issues and avoid misunderstanding and miscalculation along the LAC.”

The day after the WMCC (on August 7), India, in a move from the Chinese playbook on ‘standardising names’ to underline territorial sovereignty, “formally identified 27 places — including land, passes, a lake and a monument — in the border State [of Arunachal Pradesh] by their standard names on the official Indian map”.

As my colleague Vijaita Singh reported in The Hindu:

“Identifying them formally on the Survey of India map of Arunachal Pradesh is aimed at facilitating their accurate recognition and better awareness among the public at large,” the Union Home Ministry said in a statement.

The 27 locations formally marked on the official map include Long Ju located along the Line of Actual Control, which was one of the earliest flashpoints between India and China in 1959 when Chinese forces entered the area. Maja, a village near Long Ju in Upper Subansiri district, has also been marked on the map, the statement said.

The list includes Bisa village, a strategically important high-altitude mountain pass in the region, Dzo La, Riza La, and Pukur La. One of the most strategically important high-altitude passes, Thag La, where one of the opening battles between Indian and Chinese forces took place in 1962, has also been formally identified on the official map. So is Jairampur, an important logistics hub in Changlang district which is known as the gateway to the eastern border region supporting movements of security forces towards eastern Arunachal and the Myanmar frontier.

The list also includes Sambho Sarovar (a high-altitude lake), Bara Kundun and Chhota Kundun in Eastern Arunachal Pradesh, Dhan Bari, Pritnagar, Teritnagar, Ramnagar, Jaswant Garh that houses a memorial of Indian martyr Jaswant Singh Rawat on Tawang Road, villages of Sagar, Padma, Jyotinagar and Baisakhi. Sher-e-Thapa Memorial commemorating Trilok Singh Thapa, 1962 war hero, Chhota Ropuk and Bara Ropuk, Shivaji Nagar, Sunpura, Kamlang Nagar located near the Kamlang sanctuary and Buddhamandir are also there.

If one was to hazard a guess, this naming appears to be in response to whatever has been unfolding in this sector in the past few weeks. Yesterday (Aug 10), China responded with this statement posted on the Foreign Ministry’s website:

Zangnan region is China’s territory. China does not recognize the so-called “Arunachal Pradesh” illegally set up by India. India’s move of attempting to replace names long been used by China with its so-called “standard names” is illegal, null and void. Still less will it change the fact that Zangnan region belongs to China.

Meanwhile, several of the ‘India experts’ in Beijing weighed in for the Global Times English and Chinese editions on the naming, which was seen by them as a) In response to China’s earlier naming b) A “distraction” by India amid recent protests. The more obvious explanation to me - the recent incidents - didn’t received mention, perhaps because there has been no official cognisance of them yet.

Here’s what was said:

At a time when China-India relations are showing signs of improvement and leaders from both countries are expected to engage through multilateral platforms, any unilateral action by India that escalates the border situation shows no point and will not serve the broader interests of bilateral relations, Qian Feng, director of the Research Department at Tsinghua University’s National Strategy Institute, told the Global Times on Sunday. Qian said India should avoid turning border issue into a larger dispute, as such actions could stifle the improving political ties between the two countries.

Li Yuan, Senior Researcher, Institute of South Asian Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS): “China’s release of standardized Tibetan toponyms for South Tibet is routine internal territorial governance backed by centuries of local ethnic administrative records. India’s four-month rushed countermeasure targeting exactly 27 conflict flashpoints is a deliberate copycat political stunt designed to erase indigenous Tibetan cultural naming heritage. This naming campaign serves primarily domestic political diversion: New Delhi faces widespread public discontent over economic slowdown and domestic unrest, and low-cost border nationalist gestures easily distract public attention from internal governance challenges.

Wang Shida, Senior Research Fellow, China Institute of International Studies (CIIS):
”Unilateral place-name standardization is a domestic administrative act with no binding force under international law. India’s mandatory rollout of these 27 names across schools, textbooks and government mapping will solidify confrontational territorial narratives for generations, making any boundary compromise far harder to negotiate in the long run. Listing locations such as Longju that India cannot physically control is pure cartographic self-deception; paper labels do not equal effective territorial jurisdiction.”

Comment from me: I’d expect this to be resolved before President Xi’s expected visit to Delhi for BRICS next month. Even before that happens, both sides are expected to hold the next round of the Special Representatives (SRs) talks, with NSA Ajit Doval expected in Beijing shortly, before the Xi visit happens. If this isn’t resolved by then, add one more data point to the long list of border incidents coinciding with the run-up to major official visits, going back to 2013. Thirteen years later, I’m still none the wiser about this curious pattern...

I found this interesting in the Business Standard on the trade front: India, which once imported these in bulk from China, actually shipped $1.5 billion of printed circuit boards to China last year:

India’s exports of printed circuit board assembly (PCBAs) to China surged over 40-fold to $1.5 billion in FY26, suggesting that Beijing is increasingly sourcing simpler, lower-value electronic assemblies from its southern neighbour as it moves up the value chain at home.

Total PCBA exports by India rose more than 20-fold in FY26 to $1.9 billion, commerce department data shows. Nearly 80 per cent of that went to China alone, up from just $36 million in FY25. The numbers mark an unusual, though small reversal in a bilateral trade relationship long defined by India’s dependence on Chinese electronics components. India imported $46.4 billion worth of electronics items from China in FY26, comprising 35 per cent of its total imports of $131.6 billion.

This was India’s second-biggest export to China in the last financial year. The biggest? Light Naphtha, a petroluem distillate, which was also something I didn’t really expect.

It’s India’s imports, however, that remain the big story. Saurav Anand has recently put out a very illuminating series in the Financial Express providing a detailed look at how import dependencies are playing out in different areas.

On EVs, he writes:

India is assembling electric vehicles (EVs) at record pace, but the technologies that power them remain overwhelmingly dependent on China. Even as the country pushes to build a domestic EV ecosystem through production-linked incentives and critical mineral programmes, industry estimates suggest about 66% of component imports still come from China.

The dependence has grown alongside the market. India sold about 2.27 million EVs in 2025 , up 16.4% from 1.95 million units a year earlier [Note: if you’re wondering, the EV sales in China in 2025 was a little more than 16 million].

Only 30-40% of the EV value chain is estimated to have been localised, with the highest-value technologies continuing to come from overseas. “The dependence is most visible in battery cells, rare-earth magnets, select electronics and critical battery supply chains,” Poonam Upadhyay, director, Crisil Ratings, told FE. “India has strengthened localisation in vehicle assembly and battery-pack manufacturing, but upstream segments continue to remain import dependent.”

The distinction is increasingly defining India’s EV industry. The country has made significant progress in making chassis, wiring harnesses, battery packs, vehicle bodies and final assembly, but the technologies that determine an EV’s cost, performance and production continuity continue to be sourced largely from China.

Nearly 75% of lithium-ion batteries used in electric vehicles are imported, predominantly from China. Automotive-grade rare-earth permanent magnets are almost entirely imported, while more than 90% of automotive power semiconductors, including insulated gate bipolar transistors, metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors and silicon-carbide devices, also come from overseas. Battery cells alone account for around 35-40% of an EV’s cost.

The dependence extends well beyond finished battery cells. China today dominates virtually every upstream layer of the EV supply chain, accounting for more than 80% of global battery-cell production, around 85% of cathode active materials and over 90% of anode materials. It also leads lithium refining, graphite processing, battery chemicals and rare-earth magnet manufacturing. India, by contrast, has limited commercial capability in cathodes, anodes, separators, electrolytes and battery-grade mineral refining, forcing manufacturers to rely on imported intermediates even when final vehicle assembly happens domestically….Rare-earth magnets have emerged as perhaps the most vulnerable link in the supply chain. India imported around 53,700 tonne of permanent magnets in FY25, with nearly 93% sourced from China.

You can read the full piece here.

As Saurav reports, it’s a somewhat similar story with solar panels:

The pace of solar power installations in India has been remarkably swift over the last decade. With the growth of such capacity creation in the United States and the European Union slumping after several years of double-digit expansion, India is set to become the world’s second largest solar market by annual installations after China.

That sounds reassuring. And a sharp 70% fall in solar module imports by value in FY26 signals creditable progress in indigenisation. To be sure, the policy thrust on renewable energy (RE), with the solar segment as its core, is chiefly aimed at cutting India’s massive fossil fuel imports. But the country’s solar story is marred by a “large upstream gap” that still needs bridging. A heavy dependence on Chinese cells, wafers, polysilicon, inverters and other production equipment persists. This is despite efforts to diversify the sourcing of these items to countries like Indonesia, Ethiopia, Thailand and Vietnam.

Commerce ministry data showed combined imports of solar cells and modules rose 11.8% to Rs 35,968.92 crore in FY26 from Rs 32,168.72 crore in FY25. The increase came entirely from cells: imports jumped 95% to Rs 27,133.68 crore from Rs 13,905.37 crore. At the same time, module imports fell 51.6% to Rs 8,835.24 crore from Rs 18,263.35 crore. The country imported 8.01 billion solar cells in FY26, up 58% from 5.06 billion in FY25. Policy favours localised module assembly, but factories still need imported cells and upstream inputs.

Cells remain the immediate bottleneck…. Crisil Ratings expects domestic cells to meet around half of the projected 60-65 GW requirement this fiscal, up from about one-fourth last year. The vulnerability deepens at the wafer stage. Imports of undiffused silicon wafers more than doubled between FY25 and FY26, with China supplying over 99% of India’s requirement. China accounted for 93.2% of global polysilicon output, 97% of wafers, 90% of cells and 86.5% of modules in 2024, besides over 80% of global inverters.

Read the full piece on solar here.

Finally, a note from Beijing. I recently visited Yizhuang in Beijing’s south, which is home to a sprawling tech cluster and several robotics firms, not to mention the stunning Xiaomi factory, where I recently had the thrilling even if unpleasant experience of going from 0-100 km/h in a couple of seconds in the newest SU7 EV. Rewatching this video I shot still makes my stomach churn, though it doesn’t do justice to the sensation of being thrown back into your seat:

I also visited the factory floor of Lingyi , which is positioning itself to become the world’s third-largest manufacturer of humanoids in the next 5 years.

What I found interesting is the role the state plays in innovation, especially in bridging the gap between research universities/labs and the market:

“A closed loop from project discovery to incubation” is how Yang Xiuling, who as the Director General of the Beijing Municipal Commission of Development and Reform leads the city’s top economic planning body, describes the ecosystem. “Our greatest strength,” she says, “is talent and the concentration of top research universities.” The challenge that then follows is how to leverage that talent, or, as she puts it, “how to move results out of the lab”.

You can read the full piece here at The Hindu.

That’s it for this issue. Thank you for reading!

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Vijay Gokhale on China’s decision to attack India in 1962:

The more I looked into why 1962 happened, leaving aside the fact we had a border problem, which was getting aggravated with patrolling and counter-patrolling by both sides, which in India we tend to think was the central cause of the conflict, I discovered that this was not necessarily the only cause, or even the most important one.

There were two other important reasons why China went into this conflict with India. Firstly, although the Chinese had never really regarded India as an equal after 1949, they did not dismiss India entirely as a country of no consequence. After all, India and its Prime Minister had a diplomatic stature and international standing. India also had a sizeable economy and had been left with sizeable military power after the British withdrew. Therefore, in every sense, India had the potential to become a rival, and it was always China’s intention to keep that rival in check, if not cut it down.

The circumstances throughout the 1950s made that difficult because China was in an existential conflict with the U.S., and India had close relations with the U.S. and with the Soviet Union in the late 1950s, making it difficult for China because it felt the global order was favourable to India and unfavourable to themselves. Two major developments happened in 1961 and 1962. First, the Russians began to rebalance and take a more neutral position vis-à-vis India and China than they had done in 1959 and 1960. The threat China perceived of the Soviet Union going to India’s side and abandoning them, diminished. More importantly, under new President John F. Kennedy, the U.S. readjusted its policy on Taiwan. That readjustment was very critical. The Americans decided that if China were to attack Taiwan, they would come to Taiwan’s defence. But they would not permit, support, or even finance an effort by Chiang Kai-shek to conquer the mainland by force. This was subsequently articulated to the Chinese Ambassador in Warsaw through what was called the Warsaw channel, which was the only official communication line, between their ambassadors in Poland. In June 1962, the American ambassador had conveyed this policy change.

Noting this, the Chinese well understood that both the U.S. and Soviet Union were now less likely to interfere in any military operation China might launch against India. It is therefore no coincidence that right from early July 1962, Chinese statements became more belligerent and aggressive, ultimately leading to the conflict in October, the objective of which, basically, was to cut India down as a rival. Again, here you see the play of international relations in this relationship.

On how China looks at India:

One of the key findings in all my research since 2020 is to validate the point that China never looked at or treated India as an equal power, nor does it today. It treated India and continues to treat India as an adjunct problem or an adjunct threat, should India at any point lean towards either the U.S. or Russia, both of which have posed existential threats to the PRC at different times since 1949.

The fundamental objective of China’s India policy from 1949 until 2026, has been to keep India in a neutral posture. They gave up the possibility of genuine friendship in the late 1950s, but what they do not want is for India to become an adversary or enemy. That would mean India gravitating quickly towards one or the other superpower. They want to keep India neutral primarily because India is the only country, other than the U.S. and Russia, where a two-front conflict is possible if it teams up with them.

The methods or tactics to keep India neutral have changed over time. When China was under stress, they were accommodative. In the 1950s, when the U.S. posed an existential threat to India, they proposed various ways to resolve the boundary. When the Soviet Union posed a major existential threat to China having invaded Afghanistan in 1979, supported the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, and stationed one million troops in Mongolia, Deng Xiaoping made the so-called “package deal” proposal to the Government of India in 1980.

When China was in a relatively better position internationally, they used coercion to bring India to a neutral position. 1962 was a classic case of trying to force India back into a neutral position via coercion. 1987 was another example. China had normalised relations with the U.S. and was moving toward rapid normalisation of relations with the Soviet Union, and they felt the Government of India under Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was becoming assertive, if you remember Operation Brasstacks and Operation Chequerboard. The Sumdorong Chu crisis was created by them in 1987 in an effort to put military pressure on us. The same thing happened in 1998 when India conducted nuclear tests. When the U.S. and other major powers ganged up against us in an effort to prevent India from going nuclear, the Chinese again mounted pressure on us.

What you see now again is that effort to coerce India into a neutral position because they believe that over the last decade or so, we have tilted increasingly toward the U.S. My main point is this: their objective has remained consistent, which is to keep India neutral. Their methods and tactics change depending on how they find the international environment at any particular point of time.

On the border tensions of 2020:

Two developments in particular would have been of concern to them. In December 2019, the Quad, which until then had been handled at the functional or bureaucratic level, was suddenly elevated to the Foreign Ministers’ level, with talk of elevating it to the summit level. Here was the second coming of a platform that China saw as a direct attempt by the U.S. to contain it. Then, in February 2020, President [Donald] Trump made a successful visit to India, resulting in a number of agreements on economic, technological, and military collaboration. This confirmed to the Chinese that the tilt toward the U.S. was continuing to grow. China relied on its default position, which is to use military coercion to correct that tilt.

There is no gainsaying that the sustained military activity at several points along the LAC in Ladakh was a planned activity, and the objective was to militarily coerce you into recognising China has agency, and that it was not particularly pleased with both the direction of India-China relations and how India’s relations with other major powers were going. I believe they used military coercion in 2020 with that objective. Of course, one could have told China this would not succeed.

Read the full interview here .

It’s worth keeping in mind this argument — of China’s proclivity to deal with India going by the context of its global (now that’s chiefly U.S.-related) motivations — as we look at on-going debates among commentators in Beijing on the current and future of relations with India, especially on trade and investment.

The gist: The current normalisation in relations with India is broadly seen as a result of India’s anxieties over the undeniable recent problems in India-US relations. The China-US detente in Beijing — which is being seen as significant and lasting (I’m probably a little less certain than they are on this front if only because I’d hesitate to ever put Trump and lasting in a sentence) — is seen as further squeezing India’s options and leaving India no choice but to engage China more. Hence, the normalisation is being seen generally as being driven by Indian weakness and anxiety, rather than an attempt on its own merit to stabilise relations with China.

Here is a selection from three recent commentaries, and my comments — and critique — follow.

1) From a WeChat account that writes on China and India, an essay that a few friends have shared recently:

Amidst the current restructuring of global supply chains, India has loudly proclaimed its ambition to become the next “world factory,” capturing global attention. However, few have seen through the surface: what India truly and urgently covets is not the capital investment of Chinese enterprises, but rather the core technologies and process expertise that Chinese companies have accumulated over many years—knowledge trapped in the minds of engineers and embedded in the fine details of production lines.

Objectively speaking, factory buildings can be constructed rapidly, workers can master basic operations through systematic training, and production equipment can be acquired through heavy capital expenditure. However, the core process expertise that allows an entire industry to operate stably, achieve high-efficiency output, and guarantee product quality is the truest value of manufacturing. It is also precisely the shortest board in India’s bucket—the gap they are most desperate to fill.

This is precisely the most awkward reality facing Indian manufacturing: while shouting slogans of breaking external dependence and building a domestic supply chain, it must simultaneously admit that its manufacturing development remains permanently inseparable from the support of the Chinese supply chain.

Today, India has achieved domestic assembly of mobile phones, battery factories are gradually landing, and major industrial projects like photovoltaics (solar) are taking root. Yet, the moment you dissect the core components of these products and projects, you find that key components, core production equipment, mature manufacturing processes, and experienced engineering teams still cannot escape their reliance on China.

To alter this status quo, India took the lead in relaxing investment restrictions on China, claiming to open a “fast track” for Chinese capital. On the surface, this looks like a warm welcome for Chinese enterprises to invest and prosper; in reality, it harbors a deeper calculation. India’s core objective is to get Chinese companies to bring their capital, equipment, core technologies, and professional engineering teams into India. This would help India quickly patch up its supply chain vulnerabilities and establish a mature production ecosystem. Once domestic Indian firms have learned the core technologies, mastered the production processes, and built their own supply chain networks, New Delhi will use various methods to ensure domestic companies gradually take over the market.

My Comment: Sounds familiar? Oh the irony…

Anyway, it continues:

Bottom line: India wants to leverage the technology and capabilities of Chinese enterprises to nurture its own manufacturing strength, ultimately achieving the goal of replacing Chinese products with domestic ones. However, after years of market tempering, Chinese enterprises have become exceptionally clear-headed and calm; they no longer blindly follow trends or rush to deploy. In the past, many Chinese firms suffered various forms of unfair treatment in the Indian market: arbitrary fines, frequent audits, asset freezes, and sudden policy reversals. This series of unreasonable maneuvers made all Chinese enterprises realize that they cannot easily uproot their core technologies and industrial foundations and move them to India.

Seeing that Chinese companies are unwilling to take the initiative to come over, India has changed its strategy: If you won’t come to me, I will actively come to you to learn. Consequently, we are seeing an increasing number of Indian corporate managers, engineering technicians, and supply chain professionals frequently visiting Chinese factories, suppliers, and industrial sites. Under the guise of “technical exchanges” and “supply chain matchmaking,” they are diving deep to understand the production workflows and technical nuances of Chinese manufacturing.

This invisible, intangible technical experience is the core competitiveness that Chinese enterprises have accumulated over decades. Once it is systematically learned and replicated, it ceases to be a simple technical exchange—it becomes an erosion of the core advantages of Chinese manufacturing. What India currently lacks most is precisely this cumulative technical experience. It does not lack abundant labor, it does not lack a vast domestic market, and it certainly does not lack the ambition to become a world factory. But it lacks a mature supply chain ecosystem, experienced core engineering teams, scientific management expertise, and the autonomous capability to manufacture high-value-added components.

Today, a mobile phone assembled in India and exported to the United States can be legally labeled “Made in India” on the balance sheet. But if the critical chips, camera modules, batteries, circuit boards, and other core components within it still rely heavily on imports from China, then this “Made in India” is, in essence, merely the completion of the final assembly step. It is a simple industrial grafting, not an industrial rise in the truest sense.

India is clearly unsatisfied with remaining stuck in the assembly phase. It craves the localized production of core components, hopes to gradually transfer the supply chain architecture it imports from China onto its own soil, and wishes to use the technologies learned and capabilities accumulated to seize market share and orders from Chinese firms in the international market. This point is the very core of what Chinese enterprises must guard against.

Chinese enterprises do not reject cooperation with India, but cooperation must have clear boundaries. We can sell products and export equipment to India, but we cannot hand over our core production processes on a silver platter. We can provide basic technical training, but we cannot allow our critical production workflows, core technical parameters, and core management systems to be fully mastered and digested by the other side. Fields such as batteries, photovoltaics, electronic components, and precision manufacturing are the foundational pillars for the continuous development and global competitiveness of Chinese manufacturing. Once core technologies are leaked, the loss will be a long-term developmental advantage.

2)From Mao Keji in The Wire, where you can read his full piece:

Once the US foreign strategy paradigm shifts, the main risks facing India change accordingly. Viewing China as India’s greatest external threat is rather common practice in India. But as long as one looks at where India’s external shocks and pressures have actually come from in recent years, it is not difficult to see that the view of “treating China as the biggest enemy” either stems from lack of strategic imagination or is blinded by deliberately created illusions – this misleading cognition locks India’s attention on hypothetical threats, but allows a greater and more real threat to repeatedly exact costs from India.

This requires India to stop treating its “special relationship with the United States” as the default premise and starting point for decision-making. Instead, it must establish “firewalls” in key areas – such as industrial development, diplomatic strategy, arms procurement, energy imports, and financial infrastructure – to protect itself from potential US interference. Only then can India move out of Washington’s line of fire. After all, at the policy level, strategic autonomy fundamentally means having the ability to remain free from harm and coercion.
Second, developing a more solid base for Sino-Indian cooperation. China will not provide India with security guarantees, nor will it demand strategic obedience in return. What China can offer are practical, measurable benefits, including the world’s most cost-effective solutions for industrialisation, reliable infrastructure capabilities, access to a vast market, and investment without political strings attached. Naturally, these benefits will not come for free. In exchange, India needs to provide a clear, transparent business environment supported by credible political assurances.

3) From Ding Gang in Global Times:

India needs low-cost new energy technologies to weather the energy crisis and achieve industrial upgrading. China needs vast overseas markets to absorb its immense advanced production capacity. This is the purest, most fundamental economic logic. This bidirectional demand is a crucial factor in breaking the ice in bilateral relations between the two countries.

We have witnessed a series of signs indicating a thaw. Yet, we must also remain clear-eyed: this in no way means that India and China are heading toward a traditional alliance. The strategic mutual distrust between the two nations has not been erased. India's wariness toward Chinese capital remains deeply rooted. Consequently, we are seeing a new model of pragmatic cooperation taking shape. Indian firms now favor tech transfer and joint ventures with Chinese firms over direct investment. This aligns with "Make in India," minimizes political risk and provides China with market access.

The West, particularly the US, has consistently hoped to mold India into a key counterweight against China. They expect the "China Plus One" strategy to maintain their dominance over markets and technology. However, the easing of China-India economic and trade relations shatters this zero-sum fantasy. India's approach of importing Chinese technology to strengthen its own manufacturing sector demonstrates that New Delhi is insisting on strategic autonomy rather than blindly following a Western Cold War script.

Three comments from me:

1) I’m always struck by the curious mirroring in how China looks at the US and how India looks at China. When the U.S. worries about losing the technology advantage to China and puts in controls, China sees it as active suppression of its right to development. But Chinese commentators are fine with doing precisely that when it comes to India moving up the value chain. When the U.S. strengthens security relations with countries in China’s periphery, China looks at it as containment. Yet when China does the same — and more, by its own recent admission of being actively involved militarily in a conflict between India and Pakistan — we are told its “normal cooperation”. When in the past, the U.S. cited the gap in both sides military and economic strength as justifying its behaviour towards China, it was seen as being hegemonic. Yet India claiming so vis-a-vis China reflects “delusion” about India’s standing in the world. One hopes this mirroring leads to greater self-awareness on how and why India looks at China the way it does.

2) The widely prevalent notion that concerns of a China threat stem from India blindly following the U.S. is counterproductive and to be frank, condescending. Moreover, the rupture in India’s relations with China - following a huge effort by both sides to normalise and raise the ceiling in relations in Wuhan and Chennai, an effort that as I’ve written previously was one well worth making - was because of the Chinese military, for reasons unclear, breaking years of followed practice and mobilising two divisions to the LAC in the midst of the pandemic.

If India and China are to have a serious conversation about what a new model of relations looks like, it should begin with a basic effort at mutual sensitivity. There’s lots of debate and writing in India on our China policy, what we got wrong, and where it should go. If you’ve read my book, you’ll find lengthy critiques of India’s foreign policy and how it looks at relations with China. Yet increasingly, I find there is no such introspection on the Chinese side. Not one Chinese scholar has made a serious attempt to deal with the source of the rupture in relations. Perhaps it’s because how, unlike 10-15 years ago, discussions of foreign policy have become so straitjacketed. But a conversation can’t go very far if the basic premise is that every problem in the relationship is because of the other side’s insecurities, which is what I increasingly hear and read in Beijing. It wasn’t always this way.

3)To give these commentaries some credit, I think they are spot on in their diagnosis of India’s problems with the U.S. But their prescriptions make less sense. India is in a bind, but how is China going to be the source of critical technologies of the future when we are already seeing efforts to restrict them — unless China reassess where it sees the ceiling of the relationship.

It’s actually become a common refrain from Indian companies that in a strange irony, after years of overly restrictive and self-defeating visa restrictions by India, it’s now China that is making it difficult for its engineers and technical personnel to travel to India. I’ve heard from at least two Chinese acquaintances that India is on a list of countries that require an extra level of clearance if you’re working for a Chinese company in most sectors. Also, there’s a widespread tendency to forget that there’s a world out there beyond the U.S. and China.

Finally, readers may find of interest this report from Soumya Bhowmick at ORF on India’s economic rebalancing vis-a-vis China, which is described as “managed interdependence - not decoupling, but selective de-risking.” It acknowledges the huge challenges and “that progress remains uneven” especially in substitution-resistant upstream inputs, critical minerals, and rare-earth-linked supply chains:

India’s objective is not lower trade per se, but resilience, diversification, and greater strategic autonomy. The trade-offs are nevertheless real. Guardrails and standards can narrow vendor pools and raise transaction costs. Trusted-source rules can delay procurement. Restrictions on technicians and capital can slow installation and production. Domestic manufacturing incentives can expand assembly but may initially deepen dependence on imported parts.

This is why India’s China policy since 2020 should not be judged in binary terms. It has neither solved dependence nor failed outright. It has reduced exposure in some strategic nodes, created new capacity in selected sectors, and made the state more alert to concentrated risk. At the same time, it has revealed the high transitional costs of re-wiring an economy that still relies heavily on upstream Chinese inputs.

Another recent report was more sobering in how integral China is to India’s manufacturing supply chain and less generous in how far India has gone to correct dependencies (in short: not very far):

• China exported $130 billion of industrial goods to India in FY26

• Even as it accounted for around 16 per cent of India’s total imports, China’s dominance is significantly higher in industrial goods, supplying as much as 30.8 per cent

• Four sectors — electronics, machinery, computers, and organic chemicals —were the largest recipient of Chinese imports. Together, they accounted for 66 per cent of India’s total imports from China, valued at $82.6 billion.

• China accounts for 43 per cent of India’s electronics imports, 40 per cent of machinery and computer imports, and 44 per cent of organic chemicals.

• Contrary to popular perception, non-industrial or consumer goods (what most people in India wrongly, and outdatedly, think of as the typical Made in China goods) accounted for 1.5 per cent of Chinese imports, the rest was in industrial goods — a fact worth remembering next time you read of “powerful” social media boycotts of Chinese toys and TVs, while industrial houses continue importing in the billions….

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  Thank you for reading!

First, the announcement from Delhi is worth reading in full:

The Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has approved change in guidelines on investments from countries sharing land border with India (LBCs).

The existing policy has been reviewed and amended as follows:

Incorporation of the definition and criteria for determination of ‘Beneficial Owner’ (BO) – The amendment provides for a definition and criteria for determination of Beneficial Ownership that is widely used by investing community, under the Prevention of Money Laundering Rules, 2005. The Beneficial Ownership test shall be applied at the level of the investor entity. Investors with non-controlling LBC Beneficial Ownership of up to 10 percent shall be permitted under the automatic route as per the applicable sectoral caps, entry routes, attendant conditions. Such investments shall be subject to the reporting of relevant information/details by the investee entity to DPIIT.

Expedited clearance of investments in specific sectors – Proposals for LBC investments in specified sectors/activities of manufacturing in capital goods, electronic capital goods, electronic components, polysilicon and ingot-wafer, shall be processed and decided within 60 days. CoS under the Cabinet Secretary may also revise the list of specified sectors. In these cases, the majority shareholding and control of the Investee entity will be with resident Indian citizen(s) and/or resident Indian entity(ies) owned and controlled by resident Indian citizen(s), at all times.

Background -- In order to curb opportunistic takeovers/acquisitions of Indian companies due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Government had amended the extant FDI Policy vide Press Note 3(2020) dated 17.04.2020 (PN3). Pursuant to PN3, an entity of a country, which shares land border with India or where the beneficial owner of an investment into India is situated in or is a citizen of any such country, can invest only under the Government route. Additionally, any transfer of ownership of any existing or future FDI in an entity in India resulting in the beneficial ownership falling within the aforesaid jurisdiction(s) also require Government approval. Applicability of PN3 restrictions to cases where LBC investors may have only non-strategic, non-controlling interests was seen as adversely affecting investment flows from investors including global funds such as PE/ VC funds.

Benefits -- It is expected that the new guidelines will provide clarity and ease of doing business in India, and facilitate investments which can contribute towards greater FDI inflows, access to new technologies, domestic value addition, expansion of domestic firms and integration with global supply chain. This would help in leveraging and enhancing India’s competitiveness as a preferred investment and manufacturing destination. Increased FDI inflows would supplement domestic capital, support the objectives of Atmanirbhar Bharat, and accelerate overall economic growth.

Here’s what a Commerce Ministry official had to say to my colleague TCA Sharad Raghavan in The Hindu:

“There is a logic for this,” a senior official in the Ministry of Commerce told The Hindu. “The appetite for capital in India and the overcapacity in China presents a case to relook at the restrictions, while also maintaining our strategic considerations.”

He added that there are several sectors such as highways, bridges and other infrastructure where the strategic consideration or data sovereignty issues are not that pressing. “China also has huge foreign exchange reserves and India can provide much better returns for their investments than the US treasury bonds that they are currently investing in,” the official said.

Santosh Pai, who is a lawyer who has worked in the India-China investment space for years, an honorary fellow at the Institute of Chinese Studies and a frequent visitor to Beijing who has his pulse on the relationship, offered these initial thoughts, which he kindly allowed me to share:

1) 10% de-minimis rule: This is mostly a formalization of current market practice for ease of PE funds and other financial investors. It also signals that such investors have a role to play in acting as a geopolitical buffer. Expect to see more deals like the recent US TikTok and Indian Haier deals.

2) Priority sectors: Manufacturing of Capital Goods, Electronics Capital Goods, Electronic Components, Polysilicon and Ingot wafers form the first tranche of priority sectors. These constituted around 58% by value of imports from China in 2025. Polysilicon and Ingot wafers are not significant by value but constitute a barrier in backward integration since India already has capacity for panels, modules and cells.

3) 60-day timeline: Until now the JV and technology licensing route has been taken by select large Indian business groups. The 60-day timeline for approvals will encourage more such partnerships.

Expected benefits: Will these amendments result in increased FDI flows, access to new technologies, greater integration with global supply chains, larger domestic value addition and expansion of domestic firms? Difficult to predict. These amendments were necessary to eliminate contradictions in India-China economic ties. But are they sufficient? Several unknowns remain.

Ivan Lidarev at the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS) at the National University of Singapore (NUS) in a recent piece (before yesterday’s announcement) made this pertinent point on what the impact of India easing restrictions would likely mean:

Initially Chinese investment in India will grow slowly. Chinese investors are likely to be cautious as the improvement in bilateral relations is recent and still uncertain. The post-2020 period demonstrated to Chinese investors how political tensions can obstruct investment and even impact Chinese companies with strong Indian partnerships, such as BYD. Moreover, a potential trade deal with Washington could affect both Chinese investment in India and the exports to the United States of India-based Chinese companies. After years of heightened tensions with the US, many Chinese firms have already diversified their supply and production chains by relocating to other parts of Asia. Finally, New Delhi is likely to ease its curbs only partially and gradually, ensuring that any increase in Chinese investment remains slow and limited.

Former Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran recently offered his thoughts in The Hindu on curbs on Chinese FDI:

It is for the national security establishment within the Indian government to determine which sectors are considered very sensitive. For example, it was decided that we should be careful not to invite Chinese investment or participation in projects on our coast, which may be near our naval bases. The digital economy of India is considered a sensitive sector, and if it is dominated by Chinese investment and companies, our security may be compromised due to potential invisible data flows. There could also be kill switches that can be shut off during a period of emergency. Consumer items may not pose the same kind of concerns.

Our view in the Ministry of External Affairs, when I was serving there, was that we should not make some of these limitations China-specific. If there is an area of security concern, the basic effort should be to ensure it is not open to foreign investment. Such a policy is better than being country-specific.

First, we should recognise that it is not such a simple matter to say we want to be part of this supply chain. Supply chains work efficiently in a low-tariff regime. Unless you make your market open to very easy imports of components, these items cross borders several times before a final product is made. Second, we have to determine the components of that supply chain in which we have competitiveness. I think we also have to study the experience of some Chinese FDI, already present in India, which is actually quite successful, such as Xiaomi and Oppo. We should also see if there are any other areas where Chinese FDI could be invited. Off the cuff, Chinese EV manufacturers may have a lot of interest in India. So why not consider that favourably?

Finally, a few thoughts from me:

1) I agree with Shyam Saran’s point: I think PN3 being so obviously country-specific (despite the use of neighbouring countries and not China) was ill-advised. What it should have done in the first place -- what yesterday’s announcement also does -- is introduce sector-specific regulations and limitations. By being country-specific, a clear message was sent that Chinese investors were not welcome, and that’s a sentiment that is now deeply pervasive and will not be easy to undo, now that policymakers have changed their mind on Chinese investment. Sure, investors will always put their money where they see value, but in my limited interactions, I’ve found a common perception now that “India is difficult”, quite a profound shift from the dominant view pre-2020 that India was, for many Chinese companies, the single biggest opportunity outside China.

2) It’s worth noting that Chinese outbound investment, especially to Asia, is growing at a much slower pace. Last year, it was up 7% overall — but only by 1.2% to Asia (and that too, mostly ASEAN). Africa and Europe were higher.

3) I’m still a bit unclear as to what PN3 achieved, partly because I’m unclear as to what its objectives were. It’s often wrongly reported as a response to the border clashes. That’s not the case. It came out in April 2020, weeks before the border flared up. It was officially prompted by concerns that the pandemic would lead to hostile takeovers.

Up until then, the Modi government was extremely welcoming of Chinese investment. In the period from 2014-2019, India received more investment from China than in the 20 years before 2014. The numbers are somewhat hard to estimate as some of it is routed through third countries. Official Chinese figures pegged it at around $8billion; it was probably more, when you take into account all the acquisitions in the e-commerce sector then by Alibaba, Tencent and others.

When I was reporting in Beijing for India Today from 2014 to 2018, there was a concerted effort under “Make in India” to get Chinese companies to start manufacturing in India the goods they were selling in huge numbers. Two outcomes then were deals for an industrial park in Maharashtra to get some of the biggest Chinese auto manufacturers to produce auto components (a huge import) and vehicles, and another in Gujarat in new energy, to produce among other things solar components (another big import). It was touted as a $7 billion investment to build two dedicated Chinese manufacturing clusters. Neither took off for various reasons. Political will (or a lack of it) to see it through was one of them.

Was PN3 also an attempt to diversify and reduce reliance on China? Things didn’t quite pan out that way. In years since PN3, India’s imported more from China than it did previously, each year registering record figures. Trade data that came out in Beijing yesterday showed India imported more in the first 2 months of this year from China than any year on record. We bought $25 billion worth of Chinese goods, and exported only around $3 billion. Imports are up 20% year on year. Last year, we bought a record $150 billion worth of goods from China.

4)Finally, it’s difficult to not lament the lack of a carefully thought-out trade and investment strategy to deal with the China economic challenge — a strategy that has some resilience. The reasoning in the 2014-2019 period was sound. Yet the execution was, in hindsight, half-hearted — the industrial parks are a case in point — and then the strategy entirely abandoned.

The China-Japan parallel is interesting. Beijing decided, for better or worse, it needed Japanese companies and technology to move up the value chain, despite the baggage of history — and it’s a far weightier baggage than on the India-China front — and decided to stick with it despite the ups and downs in relations with Japan. I asked Doubao (the Chinese AI platform that’s become, for me, an essential tool in sifting through official data) how many Japanese companies were in China today. The answer was more than I thought: 27,148 Japan-invested enterprises and 5,139 Japanese manufacturing firms with production bases in China, employing more than 1 million people, and a cumulative investment of $280 billion - only behind Hong Kong and Singapore. Opening to Japanese investment was looked less as a favour being done to Japan than a cold, pragmatic calculation of self-interest.

Thank you for reading.

What I often find most interesting about the press briefing are the questions as much as the answers, as they present a very useful snapshot of China’s diplomatic priorities and concerns. That’s because the topics are carefully chosen, including the order in which they are addressed (this is not a free-wheeling interaction). Around half of the questions were posed by Chinese state media. The full list, in order, is below (I’ve mentioned the country of the media if it was a foreign outlet).

Just as for India, for China, equally important as major country relations is the question of Chinese people and enterprises abroad, the diaspora, and what China is doing for them. Also, as you will see below, the focus is generally on broad themes. Bilateral relations with only four countries were given specific mention -- in order, Russia, the U.S., Japan and India (of these, the tone was generally positive on all except for Japan, and only the U.S. was given two questions). China’s relations with the EU, ASEAN, Latin America and Africa also figured.

The questions in order:
1. China Central Television (CCTV) on China’s diplomacy in 2025 and the role of “head of state” diplomacy (ie, Xi’s role; no surprises it was the first!)
2. Sputnik on China-Russia relations.
3. Shenzhen TV on China hosting the APEC Summit later this year in Shenzhen.
4. Phoenix TV on the Iran crisis.
5. Channel News Asia (Singapore) on multilateral diplomacy - the Global Governance Initiative, SCO, BRICS
6. CNN (America) on China-US relations.
7. Associated Press of Pakistan on China’s neighbourhood diplomacy.
8. China News Service on what the Foreign Ministry is doing to protect the rights and interests of Chinese companies and citizens abroad.
9. China Daily on the role of the Global South.
10. EFE news agency (Spain) on China and the EU
11. CGTN on Israel-Palestine
12. NBC on China-US relations and a “G2”
13. Brasil de Fato (Brazil) on China-LatAm relations
14. Xinhua on what the Foreign Ministry will do to support the 15th Five Year Plan
15. News Agency of Nigeria on China Africa relations.
16. People’s Daily on globalization and protectionism
17. Kyodo News (Japan) on recent strains in China Japan relations following Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s remarks on Taiwan
18. Antara news agency (Indonesia) on ASEAN and a South China Sea Code of Conduct
19. PTI (India) on India-China relations
20. China Review on Taiwan and cross-strait relations
21. Global Times on global conflicts and China’s “community with a shared future for humanity” idea.

I think this short list actually tells you quite a lot about China’s foreign policy (you can find a full transcript with answers to the questions here).

2. On India

Here’s what Wang Yi had to say on China-India relations. My brief comments follow:

President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Narendra Modi had a successful meeting in Tianjin last August. Building on the fresh start enabled by their Kazan meeting in 2024, it brought about further improvement in China-India relations. Both sides are earnestly implementing the important understandings of our leaders. We are heartened to see reenergized interactions at all levels, a new record in bilateral trade, and closer people-to-people exchanges. All this has brought tangible benefits to the two peoples. 

As each other’s important neighbors, and members of the Global South, China and India enjoy profound civilizational ties, and share extensive common interests. Mutual trust and cooperation is beneficial to the development of the two countries, while division and confrontation is detrimental to the rejuvenation of Asia. The two sides should follow the direction set by our leaders, remove interference, and advance toward the same goals.

First, we must maintain the correct strategic perception of each other as partner rather than rival, and opportunity instead of threat.

Second, we must uphold good-neighborliness and friendship, and jointly safeguard peace and stability in the border areas.

Third, we must focus on development, which is the biggest common denominator of our two countries, and produce more visible outcomes of practical cooperation.

Fourth, we must step up to the plate, and support each other’s BRICS presidency over the next two years, so as to make BRICS cooperation more substantive and bring new hope to the Global South.

Comment: The reference to two successive BRICS summits is interesting. Could it suggest both sides are likely working on Xi visiting India for the summit later this year likely in September (Premier Li Qiang attended BRICS in Brazil last year and also attended the G20 in India in 2023). This would be Xi’s first visit since 2019 and since the breakdown in relations that began the following year. Prime Minister Modi visited Tianjin last year for the SCO summit.

3. On Iran

I wrote a short piece for The Hindu today (paywalled) reading side-by-side the comments on Iran and the general positive tone, and expectation, for President Trump’s visit to Beijing expected in April. You can read it here.

On Iran, I’ve seen quite a lot of debate in India on China-Iran relations in the context of this crisis. I highly recommend Evan Feigenbaum’s analysis on this for some context. I think some Indian commentators have also fallen into the same trap that he speaks of with regard to Western strategists:

Too many Western strategists expect China to behave like the United States—and then when China does not behave like the United States, they conclude that it is a strategic failure rather than a deliberate choice, and that a chastened China has been put back on its heels. Beijing has adopted architectural elements of U.S. posture, including sanctions, instruments and certain types of security partnerships. But there’s little that suggests it was ever going to “do like America” in the way it approaches its security interests. When analysts refer to Iran or Venezuela as a Chinese “ally,” the word ally is doing so much heavy lifting, since these Chinese partnerships, unlike Washington’s alliances, carry no presumption of obligation or binding security commitment.

You can read the piece here.

Finally, on the economic fallout from the Iran crisis for China, Evelyn Cheng at CNBC writes that currently surging oil prices will hurt China but less than it probably would have a few years ago — and arguably less than some of its neighbours in Asia - because it has “built large crude stockpiles and diversified its energy sources”, with 1.2 billion barrels of stockpiles as of January, or 3-4 months of reserves. And it’s not just oil: the South China Morning Post today reports the conflict is having direct impact “on China’s access to sulphur – a raw material for producing fertiliser – just as the country enters its vital spring planting season”: “With China sourcing a large chunk of its sulphur from the Persian Gulf, the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz is already sending prices for the chemical shooting upwards as Chinese buyers complain of tightening supplies. China relies on imports for 47 per cent of its sulphur supply, according to a December report by Guosen Securities. More than half of those imports come from six Persian Gulf nations, which ship goods through the Strait of Hormuz to reach international markets.”

Thank you for reading.

We spoke about on-going developments in Iran, what surprised him or didn’t, what it tells him about the world order today, and the impact he sees on China-US relations. You can read the whole interview at The Hindu here, and thank you in advance for clicking through.

A couple of highlights. On US military power and unipolarity:

As for U.S. power, these actions show that the U.S. still possesses strong military and coercive capabilities, but they also expose the limits of military supremacy…..The past months have reinforced my judgment: we are in an era of transition from unipolarity to multipolarity, not a still unipolar world….. These crises are not proof of lasting unipolar dominance; they are the last spasms of a fading order.

On the Iraq war, and whether he sees parallels today:

The Iraq War was a turning point. It drained U.S. resources, eroded its moral authority, and diverted its strategic focus, creating a relatively permissive external environment for China’s development. It also deepened global scepticism about unilateral military intervention. For China-U.S. relations, it highlighted the costs of hegemonic overreach and gradually shaped a more competitive yet interdependent structure. There are surface parallels today: reliance on military force, disregard for international norms, and intervention in the Middle East [West Asia]. But the world is fundamentally different. Global multipolarity is deeper, public resistance to war is stronger, and economic interdependence is far more complex. The lesson from Iraq is clear. Military ventures do not bring victory or stability. They bring chaos and long-term decline. That lesson must not be ignored.

A link to the interview is here, and I hope you find it of interest.

At the moment, I am in Beijing. The annual National People’s Congress session opens tomorrow (Thursday). Two things worth keeping an eye on: more details on the 15th Five Year Plan especially on the technology front, and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s annual press briefing this weekend. What's always interesting about the press briefing, as much as the answers, are the questions that the Foreign Minister chooses to take (I’d say it’s among the clearest indicators of Beijing’s current world view and its priorities; and just as interesting are the topics are avoided). I’ll be back with an update. Thank you for reading.

In this issue, I’ll look at some of the less discussed aspects of the memoir which haven’t been getting attention in India, lost in the political controversy, and what it tells us about the PLA and its behaviour in 2020. This post is around 2,500 words long, and if you’ve received this by mail, you may wish to click the headline to read in your browser.

My colleagues at The Hindu have been reporting on the political fallout. The Opposition has accused the Narendra Modi Government of silencing the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, and preventing him from speaking on the 2020 India-China border conflict by objecting to any references to the memoir. The memoir was to be published in 2024 by Penguin Random House India, and was even listed for sale online. It was subsequently never published and according to reports, not given the green light by the Ministry of Defence which was reviewing its contents for sensitive information.

The current controversy surrounds a few paragraphs, reported in The Caravan, relating to the events south of Pangong Lake, on the Kailash range, in August 2020, when the former Army Chief notes that the decision whether to fire or not, on approaching PLA tanks, fell to him when the political leadership told him that it would purely be a military decision whether he should open fire.

Previously, the Indian Army and the PLA have operated a no-firing policy on the LAC, where the last loss of life from firing was in 1975. That statistic still remains -- the tragic loss of life in Galwan Valley on June 2020, where India lost 20 soldiers and China lost at least 4 soldiers, came without either side firing shots -- but has been rendered somewhat less meaningful given the scale of loss of life we saw at Galwan without shots fired.

The Opposition has suggested this (leaving the decision to Naravane) showed an abdication of political leadership. They found it alarming that the Modi government left it to the Army on the question of whether or not to go to war with China. It should be said here that Naravane himself did not criticize the political leadership in any way in the book, only saying the decision (a hot potato, as he reportedly said) was handed to him.

The view of a couple of former officials - both from the civilian and military side - I’ve spoken to in recent days for some context was broadly consistent. They did not really find the account all that surprising or concerning, or when the standing policy of not firing was suspended when the leadership handed Naravane a military decision based on what was unfolding on the ground in real time. They were of the view that the Army Chief was best placed to take that call taking into consideration the safety of his troops on the ground, and it was up to the civilian leadership to give him the broad contours of doing so - ie, whether they had the free hand to fire in self defence or not. They decided he should be given a free hand.

Naravane ultimately - and in my view, bravely - took the call he would not be the one to fire first, as doing so would have given China the excuse to both blame India for a problem it created in the first place, or to escalate - and not to mention, would have started a war.

The question is, is that a call the civilian leadership should have taken? Or on the other hand, would have doing so possibly endangered India’s soldiers by imposing unreasonable constraints on them while a situation was fluid and unpredictable and still unfolding? This debate isn’t the point of this newsletter, which will leave this to others. All the same, in my view Sushant has done us a service by bringing this into the public domain.

What has been lost in the political controversy - and is the subject of this newsletter - are some interesting perspectives from Naravane on the behaviour of the PLA in 2020. These perspectives shed valuable light on how the border crisis began in 2020, and also offer lessons for future management of the India-China boundary. So, onward.

How the crisis began

The early scuffles in late April (starting in Galwan Valley) and in early May 2020 in several other areas along the LAC (most notably on the north bank of Pangong Lake) initially appeared to bear the hallmarks of the usual spring jostling that happens on the LAC, when patrolling resumes after the winter, especially in areas where there are overlapping claims. This was par for the course.

Other things were not. What was different was by the third week of May, the PLA had appeared to have completely changed the usual patterns by deploying in considerable numbers in Patrolling Points (PPs) 15 and 17A, including 15 to 20 armoured personnel carriers and troops in the hundreds. This was, just to recall, right in the middle of the pandemic, and something neither side had previously done along the LAC. These were areas where both sides used to patrol and fall back to their permanent bases. This sudden escalation was in his view unprecedented.

The escalation was similar on the North Bank of Pangong Lake, where patrols usually faced off between the areas known as Fingers 4 and 8 (land protrusions that jut out into the lake, one-third of which is controlled by India and two-third by China). Here too, the jostling between patrols in this contested area was, as Naravane puts it, in the spring and early summers quite a routine activity, and was the case on 18 and 19 May when the patrols faced off.

In his telling, while the Indian Army followed the agreed upon prescribed drills for such instances to defuse the situation, a large column of PLA vehicles suddenly appeared from the Chinese side -- and, most interestingly, carried not the usual PLA border defence regiment troops (who were mostly familiar to their Indian counterparts -- an extremely important familiarity as far as maintaining the peace was concerned) but regular PLA troops from outside in full combat gear, kitted out cynically with barbed-wire studded clubs. They were also more aggressive than the usual border regiments that Indian border troops were familiar with.

For whatever reason, the PLA was, as Naravane put it, clearly looking for a fight in May 2020. Was India surprised? As Naravane put it, strategically, his answer to this question was a resounding no -- this was in keeping with longer term expectations of where things were going with China on the military front -- but tactically at the ground level, yes. This, he notes, was to some extent unavoidable as the first-mover seizes the initiative to surprise -- especially when the first move goes against years of hard-won, agreed upon protocols to keep the peace.

The rupture

But ultimately, it wasn’t these deployments by China that caused the final rupture in relations -- a rupture, in my view, that will remain for some time to come, notwithstanding the current attempts at normalisation. That rupture came in the Galwan Valley on the night of June 15, 2020. Here, Naravane’s account leaves more questions than answers. It sheds clarity on the actions of the Chinese side, but less so on India’s.

As has now been forgotten, the clash at Galwan Valley actually unfolded after both sides already had talks and reached an agreement to disengage. Whatever the reason for China’s unusual deployments, it was also the case both sides had begun speaking to each other to dial things down. Even until mid-June, both sides believed this was a crisis that could be contained. But it was in the process of disengaging that this clash happened. Naravane’s account leaves the impression the scale of the violence was unexpected and unplanned (although in the immediate aftermath of the clash, it was portrayed by India as being planned by China).

So, what happened? Both sides had agreed to go back and restore the status quo ante. But as talks were winding down and as night fell, the PLA requested that as their camp was far away, they could pitch two tents near the junction of the river -- called the estuary by China.

A note on this now famous junction: it lay around two kilometres on the Indian side from Patrolling Point 14. It is worth noting that Chinese maps show the junction as where their border lies. So the area from the junction to PP14, where India patrolled up to prior to 2020, was disputed. It is also worth noting that in China’s official version of events, the entire 2020 dispute began with India paving a motorable road up to the junction and towards PP14. Given China’s maps show their border at the junction, did India misread their reaction to a road in this area? I have also wondered, should the events in Doklam in 2018, where India crossed over into Bhutan to stop a Chinese road, given India warning that China was possibly looking for an opportunity to return the favour, which they pretty much exactly did in Galwan Valley? Questions that remain unanswered but are perhaps immaterial now.

Back to the tents. Naravane comes to the conclusion that the Chinese request to pitch the tents was a pre-meditated tactic. It is certain, in my view, that had the PLA followed the plan to disengage on June 15 and returned to base without changing the status quo by pitching those tents, no clash would have unfolded. But India obviously had to counter this by pitching their own tents. Here is where things get a little murky. Naravane writes that when Indian troops went to pitch the tents as the evening fell, a violent reaction from the Chinese side triggered the clash, leading to a melee in the darkness. The darkness certainly led to greater loss of life than their otherwise might have been.

However, other accounts - including citations recognizing Indian soldiers - and Beijing’s own version says the clash began because the Indian soldiers went to take down the Chinese tents forcibly. Naravane leaves unclear the details of how the clash began. This remains unanswered to this day -- and in my view, remains an important question that still needs answering, for, if soldiers were indeed sent to take down Chinese tents and placed into a situation where, as Naravane himself admits, they were grossly outnumbered, then it’s a question that needs both answers and some accountability. The former army chief acknowledges the better connectivity on the Chinese side changed the balance in their favour, even leading, as he confirms (and as The Hindu reported on June 17 2020, despite everyone else saying then our reports were wrong — credit to my colleagues Suhasini Haidar, Dinakar Peri and Vijaita Singh for their truthful reporting despite enormous pressure) -- to Indian soldiers being detained by the Chinese side, which was able to rush in a larger number of reinforcements and outnumber India’s soldiers in the valley. Subsequent press accounts (and more recently a Bollywood film) have glossed over what unfolded that night.

A brief note on buffer zones

One debated outcome of the disengagement between India and China is the creation of no-patrolling buffer zones. One criticism from the Opposition has been that the buffer zones were created mostly on the Indian side. We don’t know the extent of these zones in most places, but Naravane’s account suggests that at least in the Galwan Valley, this was not the case. Both sides were equally denied patrolling rights to the same degree. Here, in his telling, India withdrew 5 km from PP14, and China withdrew 5 km from its reference point, which was the junction/estuary, and to which both sides were patrolling before 2020. This sounds eminently reasonable to me.

A wistful and idealistic note here on how political this, and other matters related to the LAC, have become, so much so that arrangements agreed to by India and China on the LAC can’t be communicated to both publics (which is unfortunate, and in my view, will damage long-term prospects of making any meaningful headway on the boundary unless both governments decide to take more ownership of what they’re doing and communicate it better. Not doing so fuels public distrust).

I do think some of the Opposition criticism has been misinformed, including objecting frequently to what China is doing on its side of the LAC. At the same time - I am not being a safe ‘both sides-ist’ here but this is my view - the Opposition is justified in its angst that unlike in the past, they haven’t been taken into confidence (and the need to do so isn’t seen, perhaps reflective of their diminished power) and all questioning is stymied. But would the political mudslinging have been helped, for instance, by more detailed briefings of the Opposition before agreements are made to get their buy-in, or is this a naive view? Sadly, I think that ship has sailed and the slugfest is here to stay, which doesn’t bode well for the relationship at all.

On the PLA’s behaviour

One unsettling element that emerges from Naravane’s account -- and holds significance for the future of managing the India-China boundary -- is the opacity with which the PLA seemed to operate throughout, both initially and during the long-drawn negotiations to achieve disengagement. Consistently, what was agreed to verbally was not followed on the ground. When this was brought to the senior PLA commander’s attention, on one occasion, he revealing remarked that he would try his best to contain the situation but as the troops were from outside, it was proving difficult for him to do so.

What was unfolding internally in the PLA remains a mystery. This question takes on all the more significance amid the extraordinary current churn in the PLA’s leadership that readers will be familiar with. As thing stand, there is only serving officer in the Central Military Commission, besides Xi Jinping, as the New York Times impressively details in this graphic story. Where does this leave the chain of command should another such crisis unfold on the LAC (which it inevitably will)?

Finally,

Following this recent controversy, safe to say that more people will now be familiar with the former Army Chief’s thoughts than they would have been had the book been released as planned in 2024. Streisand effect, anyone?

Thank you for reading.

China’s relations with neighbouring countries are… entering a critical phase where regional dynamics and global transformations are deeply intertwined, the conference noted, calling for taking into account both the domestic and international situations and coordinating the two major priorities of development and security.

Liu Yang of the Beijing Channel has a comprehensive overview today of this week's conference and its takeaways:

The conference pointed out that China is vast with long borders, and its surrounding areas are an important foundation for development and prosperity, a key to safeguarding national security, the foremost priority for managing foreign affairs, and a focal point in promoting the construction of a community of shared future for mankind. Conducting work related to neighbouring countries should be viewed from a global perspective, enhancing the sense of responsibility and mission for such work…

It called for deepening development integration by establishing high-level connectivity networks and strengthening industrial and supply chain cooperation.

You can read his full post here.

Readers may also find of interest two pieces The Hindu recently carried on the current state of India-China relations offering two different perspectives. In today’s paper, former NSA MK Narayanan offers a cautious take on the current on-going attempt at normalisation between the two countries.

The Chinese Ambassador in New Delhi, Xu Feihong, in this piece, outlined three steps for Beijing and New Delhi to take to “forge a right path” and said there was “a strong motivation for exchanges and cooperation”:

The two sides maintain communication on issues of mutual concern, such as the resumption of direct flights, visa facilitation, pilgrimage to Mount Gang Renpoche and Lake Mapam Yun Tso (Kailash Manasarovar Yatra) in Xizang, and also resident journalists, striving to achieve results as soon as possible. Bilateral economic and trade cooperation has maintained good momentum. In the first two months of this year, the bilateral trade volume reached $23.6 billion…. In the first quarter of this year, the Chinese Embassy and Consulate-Generals in India have issued over 70,000 visas to Indian citizens, with a year-on-year increase of approximately 15%.

Finally, speaking at a media conclave yesterday, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said both sides were “moving in a positive direction”, a report in the Hindustan Times said, adding that the on-going process of normalisation was “very arduous and painstaking”. He offered a more detailed take on ties in a March 26 conversation with Asia Society President D. Kyung-wha Khang:

From 1988, there was a certain understanding between India and China on the basis of which the relationship was rebuilt. We obviously couldn't solve the problems, most of all the boundary issue, but we built a relationship, we managed it, there were dialogues and negotiations going on while other parts of the relationship grew…

The economic relationship grew…there were more exchanges, people went up… And even on the boundary, in fact, we had a series of agreements which laid out in great detail protocols on how to manage the boundary, how to deploy, how to ensure that something accidental doesn't happen. All the while, you know, negotiations were going on to find a solution to the boundary issue.

Now, from then, let us, if we use 1988 as a starting point, till 2020, while we had had incidents along in the boundary, in the border areas, we had not actually had bloodshed. The last bloodshed was 45 years before 2020.

So, what happened in 2020 was actually very traumatic for the relationship. It wasn't just the bloodshed, it was the disregard of written agreements, because this isn't a grey area we are talking about. I mean, the departure from the terms of what was agreed to was very sharp and very substantial.

Now, through this period, I mean, obviously it took us … I mean, we're still dealing with some parts of this, so it's not like the issue has completely gone away. We felt that, I mean, obviously it called for a military response on India's side, which happened. There was a counter-deployment by us. But we also felt that the way forward was to find a negotiated outcome, and that's what we've been trying to do since 2020.

Now, the answer to your question is, we don't think this period serves the interests of either India or China. You know, how do we benefit by having a very tense relationship with that large number of troops out there in a very hostile environment, and all the collateral damage which it has done to the relationship? Because obviously, if peace and tranquility in the border areas were disturbed, then, you know, the rest of the relationship can't go on as normal.

So, I would say, principles or concepts, we have basically made two points, which is differences should not become disputes, and that competition should not become conflict. That we can differ on many issues. We do compete on many issues, but because we compete doesn't mean that there should be a conflict between us. We are very realistic about it… So, we know that between India and China, there will, at least in the foreseeable future, there will be issues. But there are ways of addressing those issues. And what happened in 2020 was not the way to address those issues.

So right now, we feel that from October of last year, the relationship has seen some improvement. We are working on different aspects of it. I've met my counterpart a few times, so have my other senior colleagues.

And what we are trying, step by step, is to see if we can rebuild, undo some of the damage which happened as a result of their actions in 2020, and we can rebuild the relationship. And we genuinely, sincerely think that this is in our mutual interest, that if one looks at that 2020 to 2025, I think it was a period which did not serve them well, and it did not serve us well.

In this issue, I’ll look at what both sides had to say after this very significant meeting. Significant because it’s the first time the SRs have met in 5 years - since Wang Yi’s visit to India in late 2019. And significant because it’s the first meeting since relations were plunged to a new low after the boundary crisis that began in April 2020.

China had more to say than India did after Wednesday’s talks. India put out a 380 word readout that you can find here . China put out two statements (at the time of writing, both only in Mandarin). Its readout of the meeting is twice as long. In addition, Beijing also put out a statement on a “Six Point Consensus” reached by both sides.

I am highlighting in bold what I found significant and have added brief comments on the two sides’ positions on issues of importance. If you’re reading this in your Inbox, you may wish to click on the headline to read in your browser.

What both sides had to say on the context and background to the meeting:

India:

The SRs met in accordance with the decision taken during the recent meeting between Prime Minister Modi and President Xi Jinping in Kazan for them to meet at an early date to oversee the management of peace & tranquillity in border areas and to explore a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable solution to the boundary question. The SRs reiterated the importance of maintaining a political perspective of the overall bilateral relationship while seeking a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable framework for settlement of the boundary question, and resolved to inject more vitality into this process.

China:

Wang Yi said that in October this year, President Xi Jinping held a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Modi in Kazan, positively evaluated the progress made by China and India in resolving relevant issues in the border area, and reached important consensus on improving and developing China-India relations. The leaders of the two countries insisted on viewing China-India relations from a strategic height and long-term perspective…. and clarified the direction for the restoration and development of China-India relations at a critical moment. Next year will usher in the 75th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and India. Looking back on the ups and downs of China-India relations over the past 70 years, the most valuable experience accumulated by both sides is to adhere to the strategic guidance of the leaders of the two countries on bilateral relations, to establish a correct understanding of each other, to adhere to the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, and to properly handle differences through dialogue and consultation. As two major developing countries in the world, representatives of emerging economies and important members of the Global South, the healthy and stable development of China-India relations is in line with the fundamental interests of more than 2.8 billion people of the two countries and the historical trend of the Global South's remarkable growth.

Comment: China’s reading strikes me as a tad more grandiose. India emphasises the border more as a central issue. China, as we will see later, again calls for the border to be in an appropriate place in the relationship. This is, I think, also what China refers to above in calling “to establish a correct understanding of each other”.

What both sides had to say about the border situation:

India:

This was the first meeting of the SRs since frictions had emerged in the Western Sector of the India-China border areas in 2020. The SRs positively affirmed the implementation of the latest disengagement agreement of October 2024, resulting in patrolling and grazing in relevant areas. Both SRs underlined the importance of maintaining peace and tranquillity in the border areas to promote overall development of the India-China bilateral relationship. They emphasised the need to ensure peaceful conditions on the ground so that issues on the border do not hold back the normal development of bilateral relations. Drawing on the learnings from the events of 2020, they discussed various measures to maintain peace and tranquillity on the border and advance effective border management. They decided to use, coordinate and guide the relevant diplomatic and military mechanisms towards this purpose.

China:

Wang Yi stressed that today's special representatives' meeting is a timely and powerful measure to implement the consensus of the leaders of the two countries. It is also the first formal meeting of special representatives in five years. It is hard-won and worth cherishing. The two sides should, in the spirit of summing up experience, facing the future, and cooperating for win-win results, communicate frankly, enhance mutual trust, accumulate consensus, promote cooperation, invest their respective precious resources in development and revitalization, put the border issue in an appropriate position in bilateral relations, jointly maintain peace and tranquility in the border areas, and promote China-India relations to return to the track of healthy and stable development as soon as possible.

The two sides reiterated that they will seek a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable package of solutions to the border issue in accordance with the political guiding principles reached in 2005. At the same time, in the spirit of starting with the easy and then the difficult, and proceeding step by step, a roadmap for the next step of work will be formed. Both sides emphasized the need to give full play to the role of the meeting mechanism of special representatives on border issues, strengthen the normalized control of the border situation, and jointly maintain peace and tranquility in the border area.

As mentioned, China also said both arrived at a “Six Point Consensus”:

1. The two sides positively evaluated the solution reached by the two countries on border-related issues, reiterated that they should continue to do a good job in implementation, and believed that the border issue should be properly handled from the overall situation of bilateral relations and should not affect the development of bilateral relations. The two sides agreed to continue to take measures to maintain peace and tranquility in the border area and promote the healthy and stable development of bilateral relations.
2. The two sides reiterated that in accordance with the political guiding principles reached by the special representatives of the two countries on resolving the border issue in 2005, they will continue to seek a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable package solution to the border issue and take positive measures to promote this process.
3. The two sides assessed the border situation and agreed to further refine the border area control rules, strengthen confidence-building measures, and achieve sustainable peace and tranquility on the border.
4. Both sides agreed to continue to strengthen cross-border exchanges and cooperation, promote the resumption of Indian pilgrims' pilgrimage to Tibet, China, cross-border river cooperation and Nathula border trade, etc.
5. Both sides agreed to further strengthen the construction of the special representatives' meeting mechanism, strengthen diplomatic and military negotiation coordination and cooperation, and require the China-India Border Affairs Consultation and Coordination Working Mechanism (WMCC) to do a good job in the follow-up implementation of this special representatives' meeting.
6. Both sides agreed to hold a new round of special representatives' meeting in India next year, and the specific time will be agreed through diplomatic channels.
In addition, the two sides also exchanged views extensively and in-depth on bilateral, international and regional issues of common concern, emphasizing the importance of a stable, predictable and good China-India relationship to international and regional peace and stability.

COMMENT: There are three points of agreement here in both statements that are worth noting.

Firstly, both ‘positively’ evaluated where things are at.

Secondly, both agreed on the need for further measures to enhance confidence along the borders. Which is welcome, if it does happen. This should obviously include, at a start, de-escalation and de-induction of troops in the border areas.

Thirdly, both statements mentioned an agreement on cross-border cooperation such as resuming the Kailash yatra for Indian pilgrims, data sharing on trans-border rivers and border trade. India’s statement had this to say on the matter: The SRs exchanged views on bilateral, regional and global issues of mutual interest. They provided positive directions for cross-border cooperation and exchanges including resumption of the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra, data sharing on trans-border rivers and border trade.

Finally, on the global situation, which, in some sense, is driving this attempt at repairing relations (‘repairing’ to me is a better descriptor than ‘resetting’ which I’ve seen some people use, and which, to me, overstates where relations are at’:

The Chinese statement noted that the two sides also exchanged views on international and regional affairs of common concern, and will adhere to the practice of multilateralism, safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of the global South countries, and promote the development of the international order in a fair and reasonable direction.

The Indian statement said they agreed on the salience of stable, predictable and amicable India-China relations for regional and global peace and prosperity.

As readers know, India-China ties have been anything but stable and predictable. It’s fair to say that predictability is one thing that both sides will, at the moment at least, certainly welcome.

Below is the full 2,500 statement put out by the Ministry of External Affairs. I have highlighted in bold what I found significant.

What I see as the main takeaways:

• “Twin considerations of an unstable local situation and an impacted bilateral relationship” drove the recent effort by both sides to disengage

• He said “with the task of disengagement completed” it is India’s “expectation that discussions would commence in regard to the remaining issues” such as de-escalation.

• On current arrangements, he said in the past, both sides had taken “a range of steps to defuse situations that have arisen at different times, including offers on our side to create de-militarized zones, limited non-patrolling zones, relocation or withdrawal of posts, disengagement of troops and dismantlement of structures. Different locations have seen different solutions being examined.” Note: the Government has generally eschewed using the phrase “buffer zones” that’s commonly used, their preference is to call it a demilitarized or non-patrolling zone as a “buffer zone” might convey an undesired sense of permanence.

• In the current arrangement in Depsang and Demchok, he said, both have agreed “to ensure patrolling as in the past to the relevant patrolling points, as well as resumption of grazing by our civilians as per longstanding practice.”

• He noted that “in a few other places where friction occurred in 2020, steps of a temporary and limited nature were worked out, based on local conditions, to obviate the possibility of further friction.” He “stressed” that this “applies to both sides and can be revisited as the situation demands.”

• “In coming days” both sides will be “discussing both de-escalation as well as effective management of our activities in the border areas.”

• The end of disengagement, he said, “now allows us to consider other aspects of our bilateral engagement in a calibrated manner, keeping our national security interests first and foremost.”

• The Special Representatives, Ajit Doval and Wang Yi, will be meeting soon.

The Full Text

I rise to apprise the House of some recent developments in the India China border areas and their implications for our overall bilateral relations. The House is aware that our ties have been abnormal since 2020, when peace and tranquility in the border areas were disturbed as a result of Chinese actions. Recent developments that reflect our continuous diplomatic engagement since then have set our ties in the direction of some improvement.

The House is cognizant of the fact that China is in illegal occupation of 38,000 Sq. kms. of Indian territory in Aksai Chin as a result of the 1962 conflict and the events that preceded it. Furthermore, Pakistan illegally ceded 5180 Sq. kms. of Indian territory to China in 1963, which had been under its occupation since 1948. India and China have held talks for multiple decades to resolve the boundary issue. While there is a Line of Actual Control (LAC), it does not have a common understanding in some areas. We remain committed to engaging with China through bilateral discussions to arrive at a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable framework for a boundary settlement.

Hon’ble Members would recall that the amassing of a large number of troops by China along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Eastern Ladakh in April/May 2020 resulted in face offs with our forces at a number of points. The situation also led to disruption of patrolling activities. It is to the credit of our armed forces that despite logistical challenges and the then-prevailing Covid situation, they were able to counter-deploy rapidly and effectively.

The House is well aware of the circumstances leading up to the violent clashes in Galwan Valley in June 2020. In the months thereafter, we were addressing a situation that had not only seen fatalities for the first time in 45 years, but also a turn of events serious enough for heavy weaponry to be deployed in close proximity to the LAC. While a determined counter deployment of adequate capability was the Government’s immediate response, there was also the imperative of a diplomatic effort to defuse these heightened tensions and restore peace and tranquility.

The contemporary phase of our ties with China dates back to 1988, when there was a clear understanding that the Sino-Indian boundary question will be settled through peaceful and friendly consultations. In 1991, the two sides agreed to maintain peace and tranquility in the areas along the LAC pending a final settlement of the boundary question. Thereafter, in 1993, an Agreement was reached on the maintenance of peace and tranquility. Subsequently in 1996, India and China agreed on confidence building measures in the military field.

In 2003, we finalized a Declaration on Principles for our Relations and Comprehensive Cooperation, which included the appointment of Special Representatives. In 2005, a protocol was formulated on Modalities for the Implementation of Confidence Building Measures along the LAC. At the same time, the Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for the settlement of the boundary question was agreed to.

In 2012, a Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination (WMCC) was established. And a year later in 2013, we reached an understanding on border defense cooperation as well. The purpose of my recalling these agreements is to underline the elaborate nature of our shared efforts to ensure peace and tranquility. And to emphasize the seriousness of what its unprecedented disruption in 2020 implied for our overall relationship.

The situation arising after our counter-deployment in 2020 called for multiple set of responses. The immediate priority was to ensure disengagement from friction points so that there would be no further untoward incidents or clashes. This Sir, has been fully achieved as I will explain. The next priority will be to consider de-escalation, that would address the massing of troops along the LAC with associated accompaniments. It is also evident that the management of the border areas will require further attention in the light of our recent experiences.

In all of this, we were and we remain very clear that the three key principles must be observed in all circumstances: (i) both sides should strictly respect and observe the LAC, (ii) neither side should attempt to unilaterally alter the status quo, and (iii) agreements and understandings reached in the past must be fully abided by in their entirety.

Hon’ble Members would appreciate that as a result of the sustained tension and specific developments in the border areas, our overall relationship with China was bound to be impacted adversely. In the new circumstances, it was obviously not possible to continue the normal exchanges, interactions and activities as in the past. In this regard, we made clear that the development of our ties were contingent on the principles of mutual sensitivity, mutual respect and mutual interests.

Throughout this period, Hon’ble Members would also be aware that Government has maintained that India-China relations cannot be normal in the absence of peace and tranquility in the border areas. The combination of a firm and principled stance on the situation in the border areas as well as our clearly articulated approach to the totality of our ties have been the foundation of our engagement with China for the last four years. We have been very clear that the restoration of peace and tranquility would be the basis for the rest of the relationship to move forward.

Since 2020, our engagement was therefore focused on that objective. This took place at various levels, involving different arms of the government. I myself have had meetings with my Chinese counterpart, as indeed has my senior colleague, Raksha Mantri ji. Our NSA has also engaged his Chinese counterpart, both being the Special Representatives on the boundary question.

More detailed discussions were conducted by the Working Mechanism for Cooperation and Coordination (WMCC) at the diplomatic level. Its military counterpart was the Senior Highest Military Commanders meeting (SHMC) mechanism. The interactions were naturally very tightly coordinated with the combined presence in the negotiations of both diplomatic and military officials. Since June 2020, 17 meetings of the WMCC and 21 rounds of SHMC have taken place.

In this background, I would like to inform the House today about the agreement reached on 21 October, 2024 regarding Depsang and Demchok. The twin considerations of an unstable local situation and an impacted bilateral relationship were clearly the drivers for these recent endeavors. These two areas have been the focus of our discussions in both WMCC and SHMC with the Chinese side since September 2022, when the last disengagement agreement was concluded at Hot Springs area.

In the lead up to the October 21 agreement, I had discussed both the specific disengagement issue as well as the larger relationship with my Chinese counterpart in Astana on 4 July and Vientiane on 25 July. Our National Security Advisor and his Chinese counterpart also met in St. Petersburg on 12 September. The problem in these two areas pertained primarily to obstructions of our long-standing patrolling activity. In Demchok, there was also the question of access by our nomadic population to traditional grazing grounds, as well as to sites of significance to the local people.

As a result of this recent understanding arrived at after intensive negotiations, resumption of patrolling to the traditional areas is underway. It was initially tested by sending out patrols for verification of disengagement on the ground and is being followed up by regular activities as per the agreed understanding.

Following the October 21 understanding, Prime Minister and President Xi Jinping had a meeting on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit in Kazan on October 23. They welcomed the understanding and directed the Foreign Ministers to meet and stabilize and rebuild the relationship. The Special Representatives are also to oversee the management of peace and tranquility besides exploring a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable solution to the boundary question.

In pursuance of that, I recently held discussions with FM Wang Yi again on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Rio de Janeiro on November 18, 2024.

Raksha Mantri has also met the Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun at the ASEAN Defence Ministers (ADMM+) meeting in Vientiane on November 20, 2024. The two Ministers discussed progress on the recent agreement on disengagement, the need to address de-escalation and the requirement of strengthening confidence building measures. They agreed on the importance of continuing meetings and consultations at various levels.

The House will remember that the October 21, 2024 agreement is the latest in the series of understandings in regard to the resolution of the situation at various friction points in Eastern Ladakh. In the aftermath of events in May/June 2020, and the initial disengagement in Galwan Valley in July 2020, there was a Foreign Ministers meeting in Moscow on 10 September, 2020.

The Government’s position at that time was that the immediate task was to ensure a comprehensive disengagement of troops in all the friction areas. It was also emphasized that the large concentration of troops along the LAC was not in accordance with the 1993 and 1996 Agreements. The Indian side, it was made clear, would not countenance any attempts to change the status quo unilaterally. We also expected that all agreements and protocols pertaining to the management of the border areas would be scrupulously followed.

Through you I would like to inform the House, that disengagement has now been achieved in full in Eastern Ladakh through a step by step process, culminating in Depsang and Demchok. With the task of disengagement completed, it is now our expectation that discussions would commence in regard to the remaining issues that we had placed on the agenda.

For the benefit of Hon’ble Members, I would also flag for your attention the previous positions articulated by the Government in Parliament previously on this issue. On 15 September, 2020, Raksha Mantri ji had made a detailed statement on Chinese attempts to transgress the LAC and the appropriate response given by our armed forces. On 11 February, 2021, Raksha Mantri ji again briefed the House about our disengagement agreement in the North and South banks of the Pangong Lake.

Thereafter, in August 2021, a third phase of disengagement took place in the area of Gogra, whereby troops would henceforth be in their respective bases. The next step took place in September 2022, pertaining to the Hot Springs area. Again, forward deployments ceased in a phased, coordinated and verified manner, resulting in the return of troops to their respective areas. The most recent October 21, 2024 agreement comes in the wake of the earlier ones. It completes the first phase of what we had agreed to in Moscow in September 2020.

As Members are aware, there is a long history of frictions, transgressions and face offs in several sectors of the India-China border. This goes back to Barahoti from 1954, to Longju in 1959, to Sumdorong Chu from 1986-1995 and Depsang in 2013, amongst others. In the past, earlier Governments have agreed to a range of steps to defuse situations that have arisen at different times, including offers on our side to create de-militarized zones, limited non-patrolling zones, relocation or withdrawal of posts, disengagement of troops and dismantlement of structures. Different locations have seen different solutions being examined.

Where the October 21 understanding is concerned, our objective has been to ensure patrolling as in the past to the relevant patrolling points, as well as resumption of grazing by our civilians as per longstanding practice. This is indeed what we have agreed upon in regard to Depsang and Demchok.

In a few other places where friction occurred in 2020, steps of a temporary and limited nature were worked out, based on local conditions, to obviate the possibility of further friction. This, I must stress, applies to both sides and can be revisited as the situation demands. In that sense, our stance has been resolute and firm and serves our national interest fully.

The ensuring of our national security in this manner is the result of cumulative and coordinated endeavors of many parts of the Government, obviously centered around our defense and security forces. The competence and professionalism of our services in this period was displayed in our speedy and effective counter-deployment. In the negotiations with China, the defence and diplomatic arms worked in lockstep to ensure that our national interests were comprehensively met.

In that context, the House would also recognize that there has been a significant improvement in the border infrastructure which has made such effective counter-deployment possible. This is reflected, amongst others, in the increase of border infrastructure allocations in the last decade. The Border Roads Organization (BRO) alone has incurred three times the expenditure level of what it was a decade ago. Whether it is the length of the road networks, of bridges or of the number of tunnels, there has been a substantial increase over the earlier period.

Notable milestones in recent years include the Atal Tunnel to Lahul Spiti, the Sela and Nechiphu Tunnels to Tawang, the Umlingla Pass road in Southern Ladakh and the extended opening of the Zojila Axis. Work is progressing on some strategically important roads and air fields in Ladakh. The adoption of new technologies in high altitude, remote, inaccessible and permafrost areas has also been significant. All of this reflects the Government’s firm commitment to protecting our borders and ensuring that our armed forces get the facilities and the logistical support that they deserve.

Finally Sir, let me share with Hon’ble Members our expectation regarding the direction of our ties with China in the near future. Our relationship had progressed in many domains, but was obviously negatively affected by recent events. We are clear that the maintenance of peace and tranquility in border areas is a pre-requisite for the development of our ties. In the coming days, we will be discussing both de-escalation as well as effective management of our activities in the border areas.

The conclusion of the disengagement phase now allows us to consider other aspects of our bilateral engagement in a calibrated manner, keeping our national security interests first and foremost. In my recent meeting with FM Wang Yi, we reached an understanding that the Special Representatives and the Foreign Secretary level mechanisms will be convening soon.

I thank you Sir and the Hon’ble Members for their attention and am confident that the Government has their full support in addressing the complexities of this important relationship.

This issue has quick look at the readouts side by side. You can click the headline to read in your browser.

In a recent issue of this newsletter, I did mention the word "reset" should be retired as far as India and China are concerned. Jaishankar was asked if this was indeed a "reset" at the recent Hindustan Times summit. He said: “It’s a reasonable supposition that there will be some improvement in the ties” after the October 21 disengagement agreement. When it was put to him if this could be labelled a reset, he said “Perhaps the current situation doesn’t necessarily warrant that at this time.”

On to the readouts. You can find India's readout here and a Xinhua English summary - but not full translation - of the Chinese readout here.

To begin with, how India described where relations are at the moment:

The Ministers recognized that the disengagement in our border areas had contributed to the maintenance of peace and tranquility. The discussions focused on the next steps in India-China relations. It was agreed that a meeting of the Special Representatives and of the Foreign Secretary-Vice Minister mechanism will take place soon.

China's readout began thus:

Wang Yi said President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a successful meeting in Kazan recently, and China-India relations have been restarted and re-launched, which is in line with the fundamental interests of the two peoples, the expectations of countries in the global South, and the right direction of history.

COMMENT: India is directly linking the next steps to the situation at the borders, which China isn't. China is calling it a restart and relaunch. Delhi is more circumspect.

The Chinese readout continues:

The two sides should implement the important consensus of the leaders, respect each other's core interests, enhance mutual trust through dialogue and communication, handle differences with sincerity and honesty, and push for an early return to the track of stable and healthy development of relations between the two countries. We should send more positive signals and do more things conducive to the interaction between the two countries; enhance mutual trust and reduce suspicion; and carry out more cooperation and less consuming each other.

COMMENT: "Handle differences with sincerity and honesty" -- a reflection of displeasure at the recent state of ties?

Both readouts had some common ground on the next steps.

India: Among the steps discussed were the resumption of the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra pilgrimage, data sharing on trans-border rivers, direct flights between India and China and media exchanges.

China:  We should strive to make practical progress as soon as possible in the resumption of direct flights, mutual assignment of journalists and visa facilitation. Next year will mark the 75th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and India, and the two sides should plan commemorative activities and encourage exchanges and visits in all fields and at all levels to enhance understanding and mutual trust.

COMMENT: Resumption of direct flights and media exchanges, if it materializes, are both very welcome developments.

On flights - about time. The only main impact of the suspension of direct flights was probably increased business for Cathay Pacific which has added flights to Delhi and restarted its Chennai flights too. China Southern and Air China could restart their flights to Delhi and Mumbai, while India's Indigo is reportedly considering a first direct flight to China.

On media exchanges: also about time! At the moment, there are no Chinese reporters in Delhi and one Indian reporter in Beijing. I've always maintained that the work of journalists should be completely insulated from whatever happens in bilateral relations. I disagreed with India's expulsions of Chinese reporters and Beijing's response to do the same. I've never seen a fully clear explanation either, of how reporters got drawn into worsening relations - the visa problem pre-dated the boundary crisis that began in 2020 when India started giving Chinese reporters 3 month visas.  I'll say briefly here that I don't think whether reporters work for State media (Indian or Chinese) is relevant though that's a longer and more nuanced discussion to be had another time. What I do think is the worse relations get, the stronger the argument is to have reporters on the ground, whether they work for state media or otherwise. At its peak, there were 14 Chinese reporters in India and 6 Indian reporters in Beijing. Expect the new arrangement to have reciprocity.
 
There were some differences on the next steps: China doesn't mention the Kailash yatra and data-sharing. India doesn't mention the 75th anniversary next year being marked.

On the global situation:

The MEA statement said Jaishankar "noted that India and China have both differences and convergences. We have worked constructively in the BRICS and the SCO framework. Our cooperation in the G20 has also been evident."

Wang on the other hand "pointed out that as two large developing countries in close proximity to each other, China and India's common interests far outweigh their differences, and the two sides should regard each other's development as an opportunity and join hands to realize common development and revitalization, which is conducive to safeguarding the legitimate rights and interests of developing countries and promoting the process of world multi-polarity."

On multipolarity, Jaishankar said India is "strongly committed to a multipolar world, including a multipolar Asia." 

He added: "Where India is concerned, its foreign policy has been principled and consistent, marked by independent thought and action. We are against unilateral approaches to establish dominance. India does not view its relationships through the prism of other nations."

COMMENT: It's hard not to see the pointed mention of a multipolar Asia, and viewing relations through prism of other nations, as being directed at China. The view in Delhi is Beijing is increasingly looking at its ties with India through the context of its relations with Washington, and thus misreading India's interests and actions by doing so.

The Chinese statement, on the other hand, sought to portray both as being on the same page, with Wang noting that "China and India are pursuing a non-aligned foreign policy, adhere to multilateralism, support the democratization of international relations, and should continue to strengthen coordination and cooperation in international affairs, and promote greater development of the BRICS mechanism and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization."

The Chinese statement concluded by quoting Jaishankar as saying "Consensus between India and China far outweighs differences, and both sides should take a strategic view of bilateral relations, handle relevant issues in a more positive manner, and not allow specific differences to define the relationship between the two countries. India is willing to take the 75th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries next year as an opportunity to promote the forward development of India-China relations...... India also opposes unilateralism, does not favour military alliances, advocates democratization of international relations, and is willing to strengthen coordination and cooperation with China in multilateral mechanisms such as the Group of Twenty (G-20) and the BRICS."

COMMENT: You will note some of this wasn't mentioned in India's statement. As a rule in parsing these statements, my view is you're better off following what one side has to say about its own views than giving too much weight to the other side's characterisation of said views.

THE BIGGER PICTURE: These points aside, perhaps most importantly, both agreed on the need for next steps - and, in my view, agreed therefore to keep the momentum going as they look to rebuild relations (rebuild - not reset!).

It would be interesting to see when the Special Representatives, Ajit Doval and Wang Yi, meet next. The last formal meeting, the 22nd meeting of the SRs, was held in Delhi in December 2019. As is the practice, the next was scheduled to be held in Beijing, but never happened after the pandemic began and then the LAC crisis erupted. A visit by Ajit Doval to Beijing would be the clearest indicator of a resumption of high-level contact -- and more importantly, of perhaps the most valuable platform there is for both sides to have a clear exchange of views, not only about bilateral ties but how they view the state of the world, amid the lingering cloud of distrust.

Menon and Kantha were on an hour-long and very timely discussion programme this week hosted by Kapil Sibal, which you can watch here . I thought it would be useful in this issue to transcribe and organize their comments on particular issues of significance, which I thought would also be of interest to readers as well as a useful reference, on issues including:

-       The recent border agreement

-       Context on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) as a concept and how it has worked

-       The possibilities of a larger boundary settlement beyond the recent disengagement agreement

-       On forging a political consensus and national position in India on relations with China

-       On the economic relationship

I think they both present very valuable perspectives and this is worth your time. Menon is a former ambassador to China, Foreign Secretary and NSA. He was Special Representative on the boundary talks. Kantha is also a former ambassador to China, and spent years in the Ministry of External Affairs dealing with China, including on the boundary question.

This post is around 3,500 words long. You may wish to click the headline and read in your browser. Please excuse typos.

On whether status quo has been restored after the October 21 agreement, and on the prospects for settling the boundary dispute:

Shivshankar Menon: The Army Chief is careful in what he says. He says we hope to restore the status quo. So this is an agreement so far that we know only for joint patrolling or coordinated patrolling in two areas in Depsang and Demchok. We have no idea where, we have no idea whether it's all on our side of the line, or where the Chinese are going. Are we legitimizing their Chinese presence on our side of the line which they respected before? We have no idea so I think we need to be a little careful before we over-interpret this.

This is maybe a way of politically opening the door to a dialogue but then we need to use that dialogue for something. I think we need to be reasonable in today's situation in terms of what we're looking at, if you can stabilize the situation good, but to look for a settlement of the boundary which has eluded us for 70 years.....

We know the problem well enough. I mean frankly, during the Special Representatives talks we had set ourselves a three-stage process. First, we said we'd do general principles, which we did in 2005, we signed an agreement when Wen Jiabao came to India.

Then we would do a framework for a settlement and then finally reduce the framework to a line on the map and demarcated on the ground, and have a boundary. We have done most of the framework. We know exactly where the problems are.

Today it's a question of a political decision on both sides saying let's do this, but whether either side is willing to take the political pain, because there has to be give and take -- it can't be only one sided, and how do you sell that politically? I'm not sure that governments today on either side are ready.


Ashok Kantha: There are different issues here. One issue is trying to sort out the mess that was created in the aftermath of Chinese transgressions in Eastern Ladakh in the summer of 2020. That this was very different from earlier standoff situations we need to take cognizance of - situations like he [Menon] was involved in, working out a standoff in Depsang in 2013 when essentially we could persuade the Chinese side to go back and restore status quo ante.

I was involved with the disengagement in Demchok and Chumar in 2014, and the brief given to me by was very simple - restore status quo ante as of 1 September 2014. I just didn't discuss anything at all. I kept repeating this and they agreed, and actually we had an agreement in in writing.

This time what happened was they had amassed fairly large body of troops opposite Ladakh. We apparently misread their strategic intention. We thought it was a routine military exercise and because of Covid we didn't have the mirror exercise on our side which we normally do, and they pivoted and they transgressed into multiple areas on our side of the LAC….

Between June 2020 and September 2022, we could work out the engagement in Galwan Valley, Gogra Hot Spring area and Pangong Lake Area. But with a serious caveat from our side. They involved buffer zones. That means our troops could not go to patrolling points they were visiting earlier, graziers could not go to pastures they were using earlier, and they were largely on our side of the LAC. It was meant to be we thought a temporary expedient, but this is not being reopened now. The Foreign Secretary has clarified that under the latest understanding it has not been reopened. As Mr. Menon mentioned, what was announced on 21st October is limited to two pockets, only in the Depsang plains and Demchok.

The facts are not fully known. Hopefully we'll be allowed to go up to the five patrolling points beyond what we call all Y-Junction, Bottleneck, and in the Demchok area, we will be able to go up to the Charding-Nilung Nullah junction, which we traditionally did. But this will be part of coordinated patrolling, so it is a new sort of concept we have introduced. How deep the Chinese will come, what will be restrictions in patrolling, all that is not known.

The first thing which is required is that there must be greater transparency, greater visibility about what has been agreed. Number two, what was agreed upon in other pockets, Galwan Valley, Gogra Hot Spring, Pangong Lake, that is not the final solution because that involves basically loss of territory for us, and as long as that arrangement stands, there's no restoration of status quo ante.

As Mr Menon mentioned, if you look at the Army Chief’s public lecture on 22^nd October, he's very clear that you require restoration of trust, then we'll have process of disengagement, deescalation and deinduction, so it's going to be a complicated process.

Once disengagement is carried out, you have to pull back troops, which is again going to be a difficult proposition. My point is you can't refer to normalcy being restored in border areas until disengagement has been carried out to our satisfaction which involves restoration of status quo ante, and until the state of militarisation of the border has been resolved. So it's a long way off. Only after that we can start talking about relations returning to the normal track. I think [External Affairs Minister] Dr. Jaishankar is very clear that the state of borders will determine the state of relations.  As long as borders are abnormal,  we cannot have normalcy in relations. Going by that, it's going to take time.

On the Line of Actual Control as a concept and how it has worked:

Menon: About the LAC, there is no agreed Line of Actual Control that both sides have drawn on a map, that both said this is the line. But in most places we know the limits that we patrol, and the limits that they patrol. We know where we go and there are about 16 areas where we clearly have different perceptions where we both go, or where we think he's coming across on our side and where he thinks we're going across. Those areas have been fairly clearly identified, so the armies know on both sides and the governments know on both sides which the areas are. But if you say where's the actual precise line, there's no such thing as an agreed or delineated border.

In fact in some ways that works for us. You have the capacity to embarrass the Chinese just as they can embarrass you. After all, why are you saying that ‘nobody came’ because you don't want to be embarrassed politically.  You can embarrass him also. This is a very long border. In 2010, we raised two additional mountain divisions, in 2013 we raised the whole mountain strike corps because we saw this coming. We saw what was happening on the Chinese side. I'm not such a pessimist that ‘oh the balance is terrible that we can't handle this’. We know how to handle it. It takes some determination will take some time.

About the status quo, when we say status quo, we mean status quo before they moved forward and that's why we've always said status quo as of April because the movements we assume were in May. I notice there is ambiguity, people start saying status quo ante, but ante what? The Chinese never say status quo. They're the ones who moved forward. They're very happy where they are, so they say no, let's establish peace as we are, we'll do deinduction, we'll do de-escalation, build buffer zones... it's all happening on your side so they're quite happy to do this. And over time if you keep doing this, it amounts to real salami slicing, little bit by bit by bit…

That's the risk here when you a) don't have a defined LAC and b) if you're vague about what you mean by status quo and which status quo, and if you don't show the will or the capacity to actually enforce your own claims.

Kantha: On this point about status quo, the Army Chief has been very categorical more than once speaking in public functions. I referred to his remarks on 27 October when he stated clearly we want the status quo to be restored as of April 2020 because this is when Chinese amass troops and they made these multiple transitions across the LAC.

As far as the LAC is concerned, Mr. Menon is absolutely right. Both sides have a very clear understanding of where the LAC lies and the pockets where we have overlapping patrolling. Overlapping patrolling as gone on for a long time. That's why if you look at when we were negotiating CBM [confidence-building measures] protocols of 2005 we have a separate provision on what happens when patrols come face to face. We agreed on detailed modalities on how they disengage and go back to their respective  bases.

The problem is that they would like to make a creeping acquisition inch by inch. They are doing it and this is a part of a larger policy China is pursuing, what is sometimes referred to as grey zone warfare. They're doing this in the South China Sea very successfully. They're doing in the East China Sea in the Senkaku/Diaoyu area and they’re doing it in the Taiwan Strait. And they are doing it along India China borders where they keep changing facts on the ground incrementally, but staying [under] the threshold of outright military conflict.

It becomes difficult to deal with them. The point he made, when it comes to detering China it's not that we can't do that. It is not a question of their defense budget being four times larger than us. It basically boils down to what kind of forces you can muster and bring to bear upon the LAC and in certain areas we have the advantage. For instance, you know the fact that our airfields are at lower altitudes so there are advantages.

When we assess what happened on October 21, apparently up to 5 am in the morning they were negotiating. One area where if indeed we have been allowed to go back to five patrolling points beyond Bottleneck, that's a significant gain because the Chinese wanted to block us there as it also provides a sort of ingress route towards Aksai Chin, the G219 is there, they building another highway parallel to that, so they wanted to retain that advantage. If there is overlapping or coordinated patrolling, to some extent that advantage they had gained is negated.

The other thing it's very important which we need to know is if there is a quid pro pro. If they agreed to allow us to resume patrolling up to our traditional patrolling points in Depsang and Demchok – there are media reports suggesting that they have been allowed patrolling in Yangtse and Asaphila area [in Arunachal in the Eastern sector]. Yangtse is one area where we are militarily well entrenched. According to reports available in the public domain, in December 2022 a fairly large body of PLA troops came and they were foiled. But if those concessions were made, I think that is a serious concession.

On the boundary problem and where ties are headed:

Shivshankar Menon: I wish I had the silver bullet, a magic solution. I think the problem is not a technical problem. Everyone now knows the lie of the land, knows which bits are important. The question is the political will to settle it - whether there is or isn't the political will on either side to tell your own people, look, you have to change the way you learn to draw the map of your own country in school. That's a big political ask for any politician. You have to be able to show some concomitant gain at least, and neither side has come to that [conclusion] simultaneously so far.

There have been times when we've been ready, and when they've been ready. If you look at the history of the past 70 years, you've had a series of missed opportunities when one side or the other was willing to settle. Zhou Enlai said, we'll be realistic where you are holding and you accept what we are holding. Nehru then told him, look opinion in India – after 1959, after the Dalai Lama and Tibetan refugees had come to India, after China which had kept quiet on the boundary and said we have no territorial dispute suddenly in January 1959 in Zhou's letter said ‘we have these huge claims and the whole boundary is disputed’…. So everyone in India felt betrayed. So Nehru actually sent him to each of the ministers to explain to him that look, this is my cabinet, I can't get this through. Zhou thought if this had happened in Peking, it would have been a setup. He thought when each Minister gave him a lecture that he was being insulted. So from that point on that opportunity went.

But you had other opportunities. Mrs Gandhi was very keen actually in the 60s. And again, three days after signing the treaty with the Soviet Union in 1971 she writes a note to P.N. Haksar saying shouldn't we offer the same thing to the Chinese, which shows how pragmatic she was in the way she looked at these things.

So for me, it's a history of missed opportunities but ultimately it's political will on both sides and at what stage will both sides feel [a settlement is worthwhile]. We came close in Rajiv Gandhi's time because our economies were the same size, we were at similar levels of integration with the world economy, even in terms of technology there wasn't much to choose between us. Today the balance of power is very different between us. So you can see the way the Chinese behave is very different again and they feel the balance is in their favour.

You saw what they did in Galwan in the Western Sector. Frankly, if you ask me is a settlement imminent I wouldn't think so, but you need to find some way of living with China as a fact of life.

On India’s trade deficit with China and economic ties:

Menon: In the 5 years before 2020 there was about $21 billion worth of Chinese investment into India and there was some hope of reducing the deficit if Chinese manufactured in India, we started exporting out, and we built some manufacturing here to balance it out. After 2020 of course, we stopped investments. Now you've gotten to work yourself into a position where it's very hard to see how you can deal with that deficit because China is critical to your economy in many crucial sectors, automobile parts, APIs for Pharma, electronics. In fact something like almost close to 40% of your manufactured imports originally come from China.

So you have yourself into a position where actually you have the same problem as the Americans, you are structurally economically linked to China and you will do damage to both of yourselves if you try and decouple. So you can derisk but you can't decouple.

But you have huge issues on the political side. As he said, the Foreign Minister says rightly you can't have a normal relationship if the border situation is not normalized and so we have this dilemma. To that extent what happened this October if it opens the door to a proper political dialogue, because ultimately these are not the kinds of issues that either soldiers or diplomats or bureaucrats can settle. The politicians need to decide how they want to handle it.

I'm not saying solve it because politics is a process, things evolve, they can mutate into benign or malign forms, and you can manage the issues. And in our case with China we have such big, fundamental issues --  that I think it's more a question of coming to some political understanding.

That's what we did. Rajiv Gandhi's visit [in 1988] gave you 25 years of peace to go your own way, each of you. The Chinese made better use of those 25 years maybe, but you did better than anyone else in the world except the Chinese. Now you need to find a new modus vendi somehow. Whether you can or not, I don’t know. I'm not betting on it today.

It's not your GDP that deals with their GDP. Ultimately, as he said it is how much power you can bring to bear on the actual problem. The border problem is not a question of their GDP being five times bigger than you or your population is bigger than theirs. These are frankly irrelevant. China fought the Korean War when you look at the state of their economy and they fought the Americans to a standstill in Korea.

Kantha: On economic engagement, it's a fairly complex picture. On the trade account, if you look at international trade centre data last year trade deficit was $106 billion. Our total exports were $16 billion which was a decline from  $23 billion in 2021, and it’s not likely to pick up momentum. We have all struggled with trying to remove non-tariff barriers without much success, so trade will remain highly asymmetric to our disadvantage which is not viable.

More importantly we have developed dependencies on China in areas which is most unhealthy and it affects economic security. In fact, already, just to give you two examples. We buy tunnel boring machines from China. We have made some headway in terms of tunneling in border areas. They have stopped selling those machines. Another area where they have a monopoly – in green energy we want to develop our own ecosystem. We have done relatively well when it comes to solar panels and solar modules. But we want to move to ingots and wafers. 95% of machinery for fabricating that is with China and they've stopped selling to us. Getting into this kind of situation is not advisable at all. 85% of our API requirement comes from China – for a country that styles itself as the pharmacy of the world.

On forging a political consensus in India:

Menon: When we were negotiating the Border Peace and Tranquility Agreement [signed in 1993] with China, Narasimha Rao [then PM] told me in 1992 you go and meet the following six people every month and talk to them about the agreement. He mentioned Vajpayee, Advani, Gujral, he had a list of people - all of them outside his cabinet and Opposition leaders.

So I told him what do I tell them? I don't have even have a draft agreement, we only have an agreement with the Chinese that we'll talk. He said go and ask them what to do. So I went and asked them what should we do…. We went through this every month.  I'd go for six months.

I'll say this for them. They spoke for the country. Each of them. They never said how does my party do out of this. They weren’t party political  I remember Vajpayee distinctly said if you think it's good for the country, do it. For me that was great learning because they were part of the process. Of course I couldn't tell them all the details of the negotiation and so on and Narasimha Rao also told me don't tell them everything! But at the end of it we had a national consensus behind what we were doing.

Kantha: I was Director at that time. The 1993 and 1996 CBMs I was asked to negotiate. Once we had negotiated the package – Salman Haider was Foreign Secretary and asked me to go to the CPM headquarters. I was asked to go and brief Opposition leaders before we had signed the agreement in confidence. No one broke that confidence .

The same thing happened in 2005 after we had negotiated the agreement on political parameters and guiding principles for a boundary settlement.  A very sensitive agreement. I was told go and be brief Mr Advani . He was leader of Opposition . I briefed him and he heard me out.

No one opposed either of the two agreements because they were seen to be in the furtherance of national interest. So we need to ensure that some of these issues go beyond partisan politics. This is very important. Otherwise we can't deal with a country like China.

Before the difficulties we had over Eastern Ladakh, the Wangdung Incident [in Sumdorong Chu valley in 1986] was the last time when India-China borders became live… Almost from day one we maintained complete transparency. The MEA spokesperson briefed media that there has been transgressions by China and they have occupied this post in Wangdung in Sumdorong Chu valley.

On the whole, actually maintaining that kind of visibility, sharing information with other political parties and the public, in fact it helps negotiators. So there are of course details of negotiating positions you can't make public, that goes without saying, but a general stance of greater visibility about the outcomes as also the problems, is most helpful.

Thank you for reading.

- The meeting is very significant in re-establishing political contact at the highest level. So the very fact that it happened is important in itself, and isn't something to sniff at.
- BUT it is only the first step - and by no means the last - in what's going to be a long and difficult road ahead in restoring stability on the border — more broadly, in restoring what we may call a normal relationship including on the trade and investment front (trade has been booming but investments from China have been severely curtailed following Press Note 3 issued in April 2020 - more on that below). And, in my view, even at the end of this long and difficult road, relations will not go back to pre-2020.
- Chinese responses to the recent developments— as I outline below — suggest a stark difference remains in how both sides still view how relations deteriorated and where relations may be headed. Both are mirroring the other in placing the onus entirely on the other side for 'compromising'. This isn’t surprising but it doesn’t bode well.
- Keep an eye on the trade and investment front, where I expect easing in some sectors and others where India is likely to remain vigilant. An already interesting unfolding debate in Indian policy circles, about how to navigate what's going to be a very delicate balancing act, will be worth watching.
- Finally, there's a general tendency in media coverage both in India and abroad to either hype up relations as entering a "reset" (a word that should probably be retired as far as India and China are concerned, in my book) or India and China striking a grand bargain (especially in the international press, where it's already happening). Or, on the other end of the spectrum, pooh-poohing recent developments as irrelevant in a relationship doomed for conflict. I would caution against falling into either end of the spectrum, which is quite easy to do.

My colleague Dinakar Peri has a report in The Hindu today on India finally resuming patrolling, which sheds some details on how things are actually changing on the ground:

The Indian Army has successfully patrolled one of the five Patrolling Points in Depsang area of Eastern Ladakh, the Leh-based 14 Corps announced late on Monday (November 4, 2024). This marks the resumption of patrolling in the area for the first time since disengagement was undertaken last week and also since the stand-off began in May 2020.

“Following the consensus reached between the Indian and Chinese Side for disengagement and resumption of patrolling in Depsang and Demchok, the Indian Army patrol to one of the patrolling points in Depsang was successfully conducted today. This is yet another positive step towards maintaining peace and tranquility on the LAC [Line of Actual Control],” the 14 Corps said in a post on X.  Patrolling Point 10 was accessed in the patrol as agreed by the two aides, sources said.

Last Wednesday, disengagement was completed from Demchok and Depsang in Eastern Ladakh, which were also the last two friction points of the 2020 stand-off, amid a return to the pre-April 2020 status quo. Following this, the Army resumed patrolling in Demchok a day later. Resumption of patrolling at Depsang means the Indian Army can carry out patrols up to Patrolling Points 10, 11, 11A, 12, and 13 in the area which it last managed to access in January 2020.

To zoom out a bit, I highly recommend this excellent state-of-play that's worth reading from Vijay Gokhale, former Ambassador to China and former Foreign Secretary, who I think hits the nail on the head in his assessment of ties. It's behind a Times of India paywall. Here are some bits that caught my attention:

There are two immediate benefits from the months-long negotiation that led to this. First, political re-engagement has commenced.... The significance of this cannot be understand in any circumstance. For five years there had been no meeting between the top leaders of the two nuclear-armed states. Importantly the resumption of dialogue reduces the possibility of a mishap...... Second, the resolution of the stand-offs at Depsang and Demchok ends the five-year crisis and stabilises the border region.

COMMENT: Resuming political dialogue at the highest levels — especially between NSAs/Special Representatives on the boundary question — is an extremely important takeaway from the Modi Xi meet. That the SRs haven’t met, leave alone that Modi and Xi failed to speak in 5 years, except for two hasty pull-asides, is quite incredible. High-level contact should have probably happened earlier and more frequently. I don’t think the “dialogue is a compromise” narrative that somehow took hold was smart to begin with — especially when dialogue was happening at lower levels between the Foreign Ministries and militaries. It’s good that we are finally out of this needlessly self-imposed corner.

Gokhale continues:

As far as the idea of 'buffer zones' is concerned, this had been adopted earlier in Barahoti in 1956 and in the Sumdorong Chu valley in the 1992. If such a solution reduces or minimises the possibility of bloodshed and is equally acceptable to both sides, then it should remain on the table as a viable option to pursue.

COMMENT: I agree. I actually find the excessive alarm about buffer zones in much of the commentary in India — to the extent that it’s somehow now an evil word — to be a little misplaced. I’m not sure people are aware of the degree and frequency they have been used to defuse situations in the past 20-plus years, even for smaller incidents that haven’t always come to light. In my understanding, both militaries have found them to be very useful in dialling down tensions for a period of time. I also don’t think either side looks at them as permanent arrangements. On a side note, it’s also misleading to suggest, as I’ve read frequently and as claimed by the Opposition in India, that “the buffer zones are entirely on Indian territory”. This is true only if you think there’s one LAC - India’s - in these areas and only if you completely ignore where the Chinese claimed LAC runs here. Which you could well do, but I frankly don’t think that’s a realistic, dare I say even serious, point of view to take.

It’s worth paying attention to Chinese reactions to the recent agreement. At the official level and State media, there have been very brief details merely acknowledging the deal. But there’s been more in the way of commentary from experts. While it is true that we don’t have details on how much each side has had to concede to withdraw, as these commentaries make clear, it is a fact that both have made compromises and pulled back. The Chinese pulling back has been glossed over to some degree in commentaries in India, while this is a point that has ironically been highlighted on some Chinese social media commentaries, especially those written by self-described “military fans” who have given detailed descriptions and maps of said withdrawals. If I had to crudely sum up the gist of these commentaries, they look at it as a tactical withdrawal and believe it makes sense for China to concentrate on its eastern flank — for the time being. This piece shared on CCTV’s official WeChat claimed to provide an authoritative insider’s view of the agreement:

From 2020 to 2021, Indian media often mentioned that although there was a border standoff, India was optimistic that the two sides would disengage soon. Behind this was the Indian side's misunderstanding that China would make concessions. However, as the PLA always stood firm on the front line of the Sino-Indian border, India gradually began to have a different perception.

COMMENT: The dominant view from Chinese commentators has been to focus - as you’d expect - on India willing to make what China sees as the bigger compromise, which is to accede to its demand of the past 4 years of acknowledging that “the border is not the whole of the China-India relationship” and thus restarting dialogue. I say it’s expected as obviously it’s not easy for State media commentators to explain China moving back from what it has publicly stated to be its territory.

The piece goes on to quote Lin Minwang, a well-known India hand:

China has shattered India's illusion that we would make concessions on territorial and boundary issues, which means we have reshaped the rules for interaction between the Chinese and Indian militaries on the border, which is the basis for the progress of China-India negotiations.

As well as Liu Zongyi, another prominent commentator on China-India relations:

Previously, India has always insisted on the so-called "return to status quo before 2020"... This actually dug a hole for Sino-India relations.. In other words.... India is clearing the bottlenecks in its China policy.

Liu also had this to say to the Global Times:

Disengagement is the first step on implementing the resolution, meaning Chinese and Indian troops will no longer confront each other directly at the border. This does not restore the situation to what it was before April 2020 but rather establishes a buffer zone between the two forces to reduce tensions. The next step may involve further consultations on implementing patrols, but the actual implementation may have to wait until spring next year when weather condition is suitable.

Liu also brought in the U.S. angle:

[The] US has long viewed India as a key tool and frontline force to contain China. With fewer border disputes between China and India, the US loses a major lever to fuel discord between the two nations. However, the gradual resolution of the border issue is clearly in the best interest of both China and India…China remains committed to viewing India as a development partner and hopes both nations can advance together and share the opportunity for development. Achieving these goals requires joint efforts, and China cannot do it alone. Both countries need to collaborate to restore bilateral ties. India should move beyond an outdated Cold War thinking and avoid viewing US-China competition as a strategic opportunity.

COMMENT: This view, to my mind, is probably as big an obstacle to India-China relations as the border. Liu isn’t alone in Beijing in looking at the India relationship through the prism of China-U.S. ties, and thus explaining every Indian action as part of this dynamic, rather than as a bilateral relationship. This, to my mind, is already leading some in China to arrive at the wrong conclusions on what’s driving India’s China policy.

On the evolving debate in India on its China’s policy, former Ambassador to China Ashok Kantha wrote in the Hindustan Times cautioning against a quick return to business as usual:

Structural problems in the relationship which predated Galwan haven’t gone away. Indeed, they have become more acute. Prior to the pandemic and developments in Eastern Ladakh, India had sought constructive engagement with China and progress was made in some areas. However, in parallel, outstanding issues in the relationship were accumulating. Border stand-offs were becoming more frequent, with China showing little interest in either clarifying the LAC or moving towards a boundary settlement. The worldviews of India and China were becoming increasingly divergent. China was looking at India through the prism of its strategic contestation with the US. There was a growing feeling in India that China was not supportive of the rise of India. Bilateral trade was becoming more and more asymmetrical. In 2023, India’s bilateral trade deficit crossed $105 billion, with unhealthy dependencies on China for key imports.  

None of this has changed. China is still seen as undermining India’s vital security and strategic interests in the shared periphery. It pays lip service to multipolarity but seeks a unipolar Asia dominated by it. China is facing geopolitical pushback and economic headwinds and is more inclined to show tactical flexibility in its dealings with the US, European Union, United Kingdom, Japan, Australia, and now India. We also can do with greater elbow room while seeking strategic autonomy amidst some anxieties in relations with the US.

Yet, India will have to continue to show strategic patience, learn to live with a sensitive border with China, step up investment in border infrastructure, reinforce conventional and strategic deterrence, continue with the posture of external balancing without any exaggerated expectations, and reduce its dependencies on China through a difficult process of economic de-risking, even while exploring openings for cooperation. China will remain India’s principal strategic challenge, and  a hasty return to business as usual will be ill-advised.

Sanjaya Baru offered in the Asian Age a different perspective, making the case for a better balance between security and economic considerations:

The [Indian Economic] Survey offered a suggestion: “Choosing foreign direct investment as a strategy to benefit from the China plus one approach appears more advantageous than relying on trade. This is because China is India’s top import partner, and the trade deficit with China has been growing. As the United States and Europe shift their immediate sourcing away from China, it is more effective to have Chinese companies invest in India and then export the products to these markets rather than importing from China, adding minimal value, and then re-exporting them.”

Subsequent comments in the media have further clarified that on the issue of amending what is called Press Note 3, relating to foreign investment emanating from neighbouring countries, the approach of the keepers of national security seem to differ from that of the minders of economic policy…

First of all, no harm is done if the world and China find out that this issue is being seriously debated within the government. In all democracies such internal policy differences, even those pertaining to national security, are quite openly discussed. The ministry of external affairs and the office of the national security adviser have no monopoly over national security. The Prime Minister is entitled to balance their views against those of the finance ministry and the ministry of industry and commerce. Economic policy has always been a subject of public debate and discussion in India. Successive governments have engaged experts from outside the government on such wide-ranging issues as tax, trade and investment policy.

A wide-ranging debate on what ought to be India’s trade and investment policy with respect to China should be a subject for discussion both within government and outside. More importantly, this issue raises the question as to what really constitutes national security. Is securing territory along the border the sum and substance of national security? Should one not regard as equally important the pursuit of policies that sustain economic growth, enhance investment and exports, generate employment and promote development. Should the settlement of the border issue alone override all economic considerations that aim to strengthen the foundations of economic growth?

China used its economic links with the West to strengthen its own economic power. India too must think out of the box and seek strength from whatever relationships it can establish. The old frameworks for economic policy are breaking down with developed economies becoming protectionist and using every tool in their arsenal to secure their global dominance. We need fresh thinking on economic policy and, to quote an old Chinese saying, there is no harm in letting “a hundred flowers bloom, and a hundred schools of thought contend”.

COMMENT: Some of the easing is already happening. The Hindustan Times reported New Delhi is considering “easing visa for Chinese technicians to Indian power and infrastructure projects running on Chinese plants and technology on merit”. I have heard of a couple of cases where visas have recently been given. The report added that a “review of Press Note 3 that restricted foreign direct investments (FDI) through automatic route from countries bordering India, including China, is expected” though “the process may take time".

I would expect a very calibrated and measured change in policy. One point that I think is often forgotten is Press Note 3 that restricted investments predated the boundary crisis that began in late April 2020. It came out during the early stage of the pandemic amid concern that Indian companies would be vulnerable to Chinese takeovers— and in my view, came out of a much broader change in thinking in New Delhi, unrelated to the border crisis, on what kind of investment relationship India wanted to have with China. So expect more JVs, case-by-case approvals for some deals, but restrictions in “sensitive” sectors to broadly remain.

Finally, coming back to events in Washington as one should today, Zorawar Daulet Singh writes in The Print on some of the external drivers that he thinks might be behind India’s thinking:

A key factor leading up to a reassessment in India’s calculus has been whether the US can continue to be leveraged to sustain the abnormal state of India-China relations. This is a question that Indian policymakers have regularly asked themselves since 2020. The answers are disconcerting today.  

A more transactional relationship with the US – more broadly and with respect to China – has been evident with each passing day. If it was conventional wisdom at one point in time to assert that the US held the keys to managing India’s China problem, this assumption is no longer obvious today. Washington has made it apparent that it sees India more as a useful instrument in a future confrontation with China than as a major power with legitimate geopolitical interests and aspirations of its own.

This patronising attitude has unsettled many Indians who worry not just about the US being unable to back up the tough talk on China should a serious clash erupt in the Himalayas, but that India might find itself drawn into a deadly US-China military conflict in the Western Pacific region. If the US cannot alter the balance of power in India’s favour and risks bringing its unpredictable baggage and security flashpoints with China to negatively impact India-China ties, Indian policymakers must geopolitically insulate India-China ties to the maximum extent possible….

This is a hard security argument. India’s national interests demand a management of the China relationship that is in tune with a rapidly changing international environment.

It certainly will be interesting to see how relations evolve, not just on the boundary, where lest it be forgotten a difficult process of de-escalation remains, but in the broader relationship as well, especially after what unfolds in Washington.

Watch this space. This newsletter, of course, will! Thank you as always for reading!

This newsletter will break down what we know so far.  A note to preface this post: We have had little concrete information but lots of innuendo in over two years since the allegations first surfaced – which raises many troubling questions in of itself.  When the allegations surfaced in 2021 regarding funding with links to China, my initial sense was it would be prudent to keep an open mind rather than jump to conclusions at the time of the government targeting an ‘unfriendly’ media organisation, being very mindful as I was of the real dangers of accepting Chinese funding* against the backdrop of increasingly aggressive Chinese information campaigns – which I will discuss below. (*Note: Neither Indian authorities nor the New York Times report cited by them that refers to Chinese propaganda campaigns - more on that below - have made the case that Newsclick is being funded *by China*. This appears to be funding from Neville Roy Singham - more on him and his close ties with Beijing below - who has very deep pockets and whose views appear to be aligned with China’s on many issues given his ideological moorings. This is not the same as being funded by China, which is a distinction that’s being blurred.)

At the same time, it cannot be overstated enough that facts are sacred and we should resist the temptation of innuendo being used to target journalists. That’s what authoritarian regimes do and this should have no place in any country with the rule of law. In the past year, we have nowhere had enough facts to back up the claims. As more facts emerge – if they do – to back up claims of a dangerous conspiracy, I will be sure to revisit those in subsequent issues of this newsletter.

Having said that, on to the post, in which I look at how the Indian government has handled this case, why it reminds me in many ways of Beijing’s approach to voices it doesn’t like, and why I think it what the Modi government seems to be doing is claiming to be “saving” India from China by, ironically and sadly, trying to make India more like China.

My colleagues at The Hindu report today on the “terrorism” charges being levelled at the website:

The source said that the fresh terror case registered by the Special Cell of the Delhi Police was being investigated by multiple agencies… Another official said they were probing if the foreign funds were being used for “information warfare.” The ED [Enforcement Directorate] had accused the company of money laundering, claiming that the portal received ₹77 crore as foreign remittance between the years 2018-21.

Comment: This is one important fact that has emerged so far and I first saw this being raised more than two years ago, in July 2021. If there is a solid money laundering charge as the ED believes, then that is something the promoters and financiers need to answer for if they have broken the law in any way. It’s puzzling though that a seemingly straightforward case of illegal foreign funding has taken 2+ years for the authorities to establish? Also, at the same time, surely this is certainly not something that merits seizing the computers of reporters who work for the said organisation if at the heart of the matter is an issue about finances?

More from the The Hindu’s report:

Regarding the interrogation conducted for over six hours of 46 “suspects” on Tuesday, a senior police officer said they questioned the suspects — including contributors, employees and consultant on how their association began with NewsClick and how they are associated currently.

“We asked them regarding what kind of money NewsClick paid, and what kind of reportage and stories they have done across years,” he said. The officer later said, the police specifically asked them about all big events and protests they have covered and been a part of. The phones and laptops of all the employees, contributors and consultants of the news portal were seized by the police.

Police had on August 17 registered a case under Sections 13, 16, 17, 18 and 22 of the anti-terror UAPA pertaining to unlawful activities, raising of funds for a terrorist act, threatening witness and Sections 153 A and 120 B of the IPC (promoting religious enmity between groups on grounds of religion and criminal conspiracy respectively).

Some more details from The Hindu’s report on Wednesday about the raids:

Police raided the homes and offices of journalists, authors, academics, contributors and a satirist associated with the news portal in a terrorism case. The journalists were asked questions about the Delhi communal riots and the CAA agitation of 2019-20, the farmers protest of 2020-21 and whether they used encrypted messaging applications such as Signal on their phones. The phones and laptops of all the employees, contributors and consultants of the news portal were seized. The searches and arrests were done in a fresh case registered on August 17, under India’s draconian anti-terror law, the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act. Details of the case are not known.

From The Hindu’s editorial today:

The trigger for the set of actions now is apparently an article in The New York Times that questioned the motives of an investor in NewsClick and alleged his proximity to the Chinese government, but it did not point to any specific article on the site that amounted to illegal propaganda against India. Government representatives first engaged in a systematic vilification and disinformation campaign against the site based on this article. Tuesday’s actions seem driven by an impulse to scapegoat a media outlet and to bring about, therefore, a chilling effect on critical journalism. No government can or should so brazenly target journalists solely based on suspicion about its funding and thereby undermine the freedom of expression, which is guaranteed under the Constitution.

A brief word here on the unwitting role of the New York Times in all of this. The editorial refers to this report from the NYT on Neville Roy Singham:

What is less known, and is hidden amid a tangle of nonprofit groups and shell companies, is that Mr. Singham works closely with the Chinese government media machine and is financing its propaganda worldwide.

From a think tank in Massachusetts to an event space in Manhattan, from a political party in South Africa to news organizations in India and Brazil, The Times tracked hundreds of millions of dollars to groups linked to Mr. Singham that mix progressive advocacy with Chinese government talking points.

The report had one reference to Newsclick, as reporters Mara Hvistendahl, David A. Fahrenthold, Lynsey Chutel and Ishaan Jhaveri wrote: “In New Delhi, corporate filings show, Mr. Singham’s network financed a news site, NewsClick, that sprinkled its coverage with Chinese government talking points.”

Here is one such video that certainly looks like a CPC promotional video to me, despite Newsclick yesterday denying it carried Chinese propaganda:

Comment: I did, however, find it peculiar that Mara Hvistendahl, David A. Fahrenthold, Lynsey Chutel and Ishaan Jhaveri didn’t bother seeking a comment from Newsclick on their funding from China or ties to Neville Roy Singham. I am fairly certain that if this was a U.S. news website, they would have given them the opportunity to respond. Another thought: if Neville Roy Singham is financing terrorism or serious conspiracies in India, I also wonder if Indian diplomats have raised this diplomatically with the U.S. - he is a citizen - or with China, where he resides - in the past two years? To my knowledge, they haven't.

Two final thoughts:

On the issue of Chinese disinformation: The NYT piece points to what I referred to at the top of this issue on increasingly ambitious and well-funded attempts by China to shape the narrative abroad, including through their fellow travellers in Leftist media organisations (which Newsclick could perhaps crudely be characterised as) who for ideological reasons tend to only praise China and entirely ignore - and even defend - the same human rights violations and suppression of minorities they highlight at home. These information campaigns have also been directed at Indian audiences as I have reported previously including by funding Indian reporters on fellowships in China which aren’t disclosed in reporting. You can read about that here.

Monitoring investment from China into all Indian companies including into news organisations - which I flagged in this Brookings India report in 2020 - was something the Modi government missed the bus on as it went all out courting Chinese investment from 2014-2019, when it rose to record levels and without any monitoring, until Press Note Three in April 2020 which brought a stop to it. In my view, it would be extremely ill-advised for any news organisation to accept funding without due diligence and as far as Neville Roy Singham is concerned, there are clearly many red flags - no pun intended.

On India’s handling of the matter: What I found telling in the reports so far is the concern of Indian authorities seems less about the Chinese propaganda than the coverage of real issues in India. As this report says:

NewsClick journalists who were raided by Delhi Police on Tuesday in connection with a probe into the news portal's alleged foreign funding, were questioned on whether they had reported on matters like the 2020 Delhi riots, the farmers’ protest against the Narendra Modi government’s farm laws and the COVID-19 crisis.

Senior journalist Paranjoy Guha Thakurta told reporters after he was released that he was asked if he had called a US phone number which belongs to his brother-in-law and if he uses the Signal messaging app. He was also asked if he had covered the Delhi riots in 2020 and the farmers’ protest against the Centre's three contentious farm laws.

With regards to Delhi riots, Thakurta said he didn't cover it. "They asked me whether I reported on farmers protests. I said yes. There were many people questioning me. All of them asked different questions,” he said.

A junior member of NewsClick's editorial team, whose house was also raided, told The Wire that she was asked if she was “paid extra” for stories on the farmers’ protest and the Delhi riots. “They also wanted to know why I wrote stories against the country and government. They had no follow up questions, just a performa that they were reading from,” the employee told The Wire.

There was also this: officials raised the website violating India’s sovereignty through maps:

The Delhi Police has accused NewsClick founder Prabir Purkayastha -- arrested in a case filed under anti-terror law UAPA following charges that the portal received money to spread pro-China propaganda -- saying that the news portal pushed a "global agenda" to show that Arunachal Pradesh and Kashmir are not part of India, a report said.

There is a danger here of conflating these two issues. The framing of covering protests in India as foreign propaganda leaves me with the inescapable feeling of having seen this film before. “Hostile foreign forces” is, to borrow from Beijing’s playbook, the only reason why some Chinese writers and dissidents write about Tibet or Xinjiang or Hong Kong. Surely, Beijing reasons, they could not have done so out of their own volition and are only raising issues at the behest of the West. Any and all dissent, by definition, has to be a foreign conspiracy. As I said at the start of this post, my initial sense was it would be prudent to keep an open mind rather than dismiss the investigation into financial dealings out of hand. But unfortunately, two years on, we aren’t seeing a case being prosecuted on the basis of laws which leaves you with the unfortunate conclusion, for now at least, that the government seems to think the best way to protect India from this ‘China conspiracy’ is, well, to make India a little more like China.

It hasn’t been a great past few weeks for reporters on the India-China beat. In today’s The Hindu newspaper, I have a column on the recent expulsions of journalists by India and China. You can read the column here (partial paywall).

In this post, I thought I’d add a little context to the expulsions (there's been a lot of media coverage on this recently, although not all of it accurate).

As I write in today’s column, in my view, both sides bear their share of the blame for letting things come to this — and as I also unfortunately write, the mess began with New Delhi curtailing Chinese reporters visas for reasons as yet unexplained — and both sides also stand to lose from this race to the bottom. What is needed now is a political agreement that insulates the work of the press from diplomatic rows. That, however, remains an unlikely prospect. You can read the column here.

So, what’s the state of play? This Bloomberg report this week brought a lot of attention to the visa row:

The last Indian journalist in China has been asked to leave, as Beijing and New Delhi eject each other’s reporters in a tit-for-tat row deepening a rift between the Asian economic powerhouses.

Chinese authorities have instructed the Press Trust of India reporter to leave the country this month, according to a person familiar with the matter. His departure will wipe India’s media presence from the world’s second largest economy at a moment of deteriorating ties.

Well, as of today (June 16), this is actually inaccurate. The last Indian reporter in China has not been asked to leave and still has valid credentials (which the Chinese Foreign Ministry also publicly confirmed this week).

The last Indian reporter has been told he will have to leave *if*India doesn’t renew the visa for the last Xinhua reporter in New Delhi. As I understand, the last reporter’s visa is currently under processing. In all likelihood, an extension will be denied so the last Indian correspondent in China will probably leave in coming weeks. But that has not yet happened.

The Bloomberg report also had a puzzling detail on the origins of this mess:

Indian officials familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified due to the sensitivity of the situation, said the visa spat began a few months ago over Indian journalists hiring assistants in China to help with reporting. Beijing imposed measures limiting employment to three individuals at a time who must come from a pool provided by the Chinese authorities, they said. India doesn’t have a cap on hiring.

I don’t know where this is coming from — and I’m surprised to see Indian officials quoted as saying this — but this is not true. Let me be clear: the expulsions of Indian journalists in China had nothing whatsoever to do with what they were or weren’t doing in the country. Spinning it as such needs rebutting.

What led to the recent expulsions?

On April 4, both Anshuman Mishra, who’s the Prasar Bharati correspondent (India’s public broadcaster) and I were told by Beijing that our visas were frozen and this was in response to a Chinese journalist being made to leave end-March, leaving only two Chinese reporters in India. By barring us from returning to China, Beijing was leaving only two Indian reporters in India. In other words, tit-for-tat.

Then in May, India asked another Chinese reporter to leave, saying he had stayed in India for too many years (I’m not entirely sure why this would be a concern for New Delhi , surely that’s a matter for the reporter’s employers?).

This then prompted Beijing in mid-May to again retaliate by asking a third Indian reporter, from the Hindustan Times, to leave. Now, we are left with one reporter in each country, and quite possibly, it may be down to zero soon, depending on what India decides to do with the last Chinese reporter.

It does concern me that Delhi appears to have come to the conclusion that it is fine with having no Indian reporters in China as long as it is able to have no Chinese media presence in India. At least, that’s in my opinion the inescapable conclusion as Delhi was well aware that the recent expulsions - particularly in May - would mean the third Indian reporter almost certainly being kicked out. Yet it went ahead with it nonetheless.

As for Beijing, it made the problem worse in 2020 by freezing new Indian visas. As I understand it, Beijing’s response to the three month visas has been somewhat peculiar, because as far as I am aware, it was not raised by MFA officials at a high level for quite some time. Beijing responded simply by stopping visas in 2020.

The lack of dialogue through this entire period has been telling. On a sobering note, one wonders if India and China cannot come to an agreement on something as simple as guaranteeing and protecting the work of half a dozen reporters on each side, pray what chances do we have of making headway on the far more weightier and complex issues that plague the relationship?

Finally, does all this matter?

I’ve seen the argument made that it doesn’t matter having reporters on the ground especially when access is restricted in the Xi era. But as I mention in my column, being on the ground gives you a texture of a country that is otherwise impossible to glean, even from simple daily conversations. I can attest to that, writing as I was on China from outside the country from 2018-2022. Being back on the ground last year gave me a sense of immediacy and perspective — to cite but one example, the impact of the pandemic policies and the unprecedented protests I covered in Beijing in November.

Looking at it from purely India’s self-interest, having no on-the-ground reporters, whether from private Indian media or from the public broadcaster, is surely self-defeating. Given India’s challenging relations with China - geography means this isn't going to go away — it’s become all the more important to understand what’s happening — and not from viral social media videos or posts that more often than not give you, at best, one-tenth of a broader picture, or at worst, something entirely misleading.

Blocking off all channels of communication and exchange merely because of the current problems is extraordinarily short-sighted and self-defeating — by both sides.

Recommended reading

From India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar’s recent interview with The Economist on the on-going LAC negotiations:

TE Turning to the northern border region, you’ve spoken of the need to return to “peace and tranquillity” along the line of actual control. Would agreeing a buffer zone [with China] on the last remaining positions achieve that peace and tranquillity? And how likely is it, do you think?

SJ I want to rewind this a bit. Our problems with China are not new. They actually go back into the 1950s. If my memory serves me right, our first negotiation with China was as early as 1958. And I think I’m the only one in the room who was even born then. Now, very often, when you have these situations, you have the two claimed lands, the Indian-claimed land, and the Chinese-claimed land, they do not coincide. And both sides send out patrols to assert their claim line. And the problem can often be that these patrols collide with each other and then contest their jurisdictions. This has been the running problem.

Now, when you have a very tense situation or occasionally a violent situation, the two countries have agreed on some understanding where there is self-restraint on patrolling in a certain defined area. This is not happening for the first time. If you go to 1958, it happened then as well. We had a major difference with the Chinese in the 1980s, when negotiations went on for seven or eight years. Even then we had an understanding what you will do, but more importantly, what will you not do? And this understanding works both ways. If there are places my troops cannot patrol, there are also places that his troops cannot patrol.

That’s one element in how we have addressed some of the current problems. We have some other problems still to be resolved. When we are talking, how do you produce a solution which works for both sides? I wouldn’t predict simply because at this time, I’m still talking to them. The point I would make is every time if you look at the last three years, there’ve been people who’ve been very ready to say, well, you know, this is impossible to solve, this is never going to happen. And if I can put it very politely they’ve been proved wrong again and again.

TE Let’s imagine that there is a buffer zone agreement on the last remaining flashpoints. How would that potentially change India’s relationship with China?

SJ I wouldn’t get into that hypothetical. I just won’t get drawn in on that.

TE There have been 18 rounds of commander-level talks. You have been making progress working through the different flash points, and the pattern has been to create some buffer zones on both sides. So if you can do the same in Demchok and the Depsang plains, which are the points they’re talking about now, could that provide a sustainable solution?

SJ I don’t want to get drawn into this but every sector and every situation is not the same. Even what worked in a, b, and c, if you go down to the intricacies, which sadly I cannot share with you, they’re not identical. This is a really complex problem, which is why we need so many rounds and such great effort. It’s not a question of looking at the map and deciding what you’re going to do. There’s a topography out there. The topography has its own value and its own disadvantages. So each one has been a very detailed, very complex negotiation. But your comment presupposes that extrapolating previous solutions is a way out of this one. I’m not prepared to be drawn into that, simply because that need not be the way the problem can be resolved. So I would caution that it’s not just a question of saying three places got done this way and therefore four and five will, too. That’s not the way it works.

Interesting comments and the most we have had so far on what’s been going on in the negotiations.

Does this mean a resolution at Demchok and Depsang - the last two spots - and completing disengagement is nowhere on the horizon? At the very least, it means the current state of relations is most likely here to stay for a while yet.

Thank you for reading. I ended up writing more than I intended to on the visa saga - though I made an effort to spare readers even more detail of the ins-and-outs - but here’s hoping there’s a resolution soon, and that this wouldn’t be something that coming issues of the newsletter would need to dwell on.

Post-script: I started this Substack in January 2021, thinking it would be a nice space to share on-the-ground notes from living in and reporting from Beijing. I finally ended up in Beijing only in June 2022. The visa that took me 30 months to get ended up being invalidated in less than nine months. So much for “on the ground”....

Apologies for the two-month absence. I’ve spent quite a bit of time these past few weeks, particularly over the Chinese New Year holiday, on the road, which has been fantastic - travel within China, I’m happy to say, is back to how it was pre-Covid.

This issue will look at Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang’s visit to India, and External Affairs Minister Jaishankar’s recent interview and detailed comments on relations with China, and what they tell us about where things stand between the two countries.

Today (March 1), China's Foreign Minister Qin Gang arrives in New Delhi for the G20 foreign ministers' meeting, which is tomorrow (March 2). This is the first high-level visit from China since Wang Yi's in March 2022, which, in of itself, captures the state of relations and the freeze that’s still prevailing.

Qin Gang, the new Foreign Minister, has been on a flurry of diplomatic activity - part of a broader effort, it appears, to start Xi Jinping's third term on the front foot, also coinciding with China's 'opening up' after three years of zero-Covid. In New Delhi, a bilateral meeting between Jaishankar and Qin Gang on the sidelines is a possibility, as also between Qin and NSA Ajit Doval. Qin may be appointed State Councillor at the National People’s Congress session which opens on Sunday, which would also make him the Special Representative, along with Doval, in the border talks. It will be interesting to see what comes out of his trip, which this newsletter will watch closely this week.

The bottom line: As much as Beijing is trying, with several countries, to use the new third term to start afresh - note the recent thaws with Australia and Japan - a major thaw with India appears unlikely for now, unless there is a significant change in Beijing's posture on the border.

This is not impossible - never say never - but the way Beijing has been dragging its feet on restoring the status quo on the LAC, while continuing, in official media, to highlight its developing of forward infrastructure along the border, suggests its unlikely.

At least, both sides are now talking in person, after three difficult years, which is a good thing. Last week also saw the first significant visit from India to China in three years, when Joint Secretary (East Asia) Shilpak Ambule visited Beijing. This, in India’s readout, struck me as being cautiously upbeat:

The two sides reviewed the situation along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the Western Sector of India-China border areas and discussed proposals for disengagement in the remaining areas in an open and constructive manner, which would help in restoration of peace and tranquillity along the LAC in Western Sector and create conditions for restoration of normalcy in bilateral relations.

Also last week, Jaishankar's long interview with ANI's Smita Prakash, where he spoke on China in some detail, caused a bit of a stir in India — specifically, his comments on China being a larger economy being reason for India “to not pick a fight”. Cue lots of uproar, and Rahul Gandhi calling out his "cowardice" .

Beyond this statement - for what it’s worth, I thought it was hardly controversial and pretty much basic common sense, and the uproar, in fact, spoke to me more about the broader sense of denial when it comes to China - I thought it’s worth going over the rest of his responses on China, which somewhat got lost in the din over this particular remark.

I thought they were quite revealing about how New Delhi looks at relations at the moment, where they are headed, and also how the China relationship has become wound up in domestic political debates, which, it seems, will likely be an increasing factor going forward, as well as a possible constraint on New Delhi and how it crafts ties with China.

Here, anyway, are the relevant bits on China that caught my eye [edited for clarity, you can find the full interview here:

Q: On reports saying India has lost 1,000 sq km to China (since April 2020) and criticism of the government’s silence":

A: I think they are deliberately misrepresenting the situation. I will give you two specific examples. Remember the hullabaloo about the bridge being built on Pangong Tso. I will tell you when the area first came under Chinese control. The Chinese first came there in 1958 and captured it in October 1962. And you are going to blame the Modi government in 2023 for constructing a bridge which the Chinese captured in 1962? And you don't have the honesty to say that's when it happened?

I’ll give you another example. There were border villages which have come up in Longju, where there was a clash [in 1959]. This is smoke and mirrors. It’s almost like 1962 never happened. And why didn't you [referring to the Opposition/Congress] build that border infrastructure? Look at the budget. During the Modi period, the budget has gone up five times. Until, 2014, it was roughly 2 to 4000 crore, today it’s, 14000 crore [$1.7 billion]. If you look at roads built, bridges built, they have doubled, tripled. We know the underlying thinking earlier was we leave it like that so the Chinese can't come inside. Personally, I wouldn't get into a blame game but if you want to whitewash all that happened and say everything happened after 2020, I will have to call you out.

Q: Is China now the biggest threat and are we in a quasi war like situation?

We are legitimately building our border infrastructure because they have built their border infrastructure. In my view, we should have done it 25 years ago.

Q: So that means we are reactive?

Not at all. They are the bigger economy. What am I going to do? As a smaller economy, I'm going to go pick a fight with a bigger economy? It’s not about being reactive, it’s about having common sense. Secondly, bear in mind we had an agreement you are not supposed to bring the military to the border in large numbers. So by that logic of yours, I should be the first to break that agreement?

Q: Why not? Why are we always the ones not breaking the agreement and it’s the other side that does?

A: I think you need to take a considered view of this. Why do we reach agreements? Because it’s in our interest to stabilise a border or a situation. It’s not out of love or affection or sentiment that we do it. It’s cold calculation and common sense. Our agreements with China were reached in 1993, 1996… I'm not getting into which government, I try to avoid this whole debate. I don't like in foreign policy, maybe because I've been so long in this field, that ‘these people are right and those people were wrong.’ I don't think it serves the nation. But if I do find others are playing a political game where everything is being blamed on the present dispensation and an entire history is begin whitewashed, that history has to come out.

On the question of breaking agreement for not, generally as a rule, sensible countries do not. What do you need most in international relations? If you have a reputation as a country that breaks agreements, what do you think is the worth of your agreements?

Q: But where has China kept agreements with any country?

A: From 1993, 1996 to 2020, was the agreement observed or not? So how can you say the agreement is not worth the piece of paper? I don't think signing the agreements was wrong. I disagree with you. Those agreements were signed because at the time we needed to stabilise the border. And they did stabilise the border, please also note that. 

Q: Why can't we come to an agreement [with China] after so many rounds of talks?

A: Because when any other country’s claims are not reasonable you will not come to an agreement. You have to look at what is being discussed [not just the number of rounds of talks]. 

If I was to sum up the China situation - please do note this whole narrative that the government is on the defensive and we are being accommodative - I ask people, if we are being accommodative, who sent the Indian military to the LAC? We have the largest peacetime deployment in our history on the China border, we are keeping troops there at a huge cost with great effort. We have increased infrastructure spending five times during this government. So tell me, who is the defensive, accommodative person? The question you should ask is who is telling the truth, who is playing footsie with history.

There’s quite a lot to digest, but some brief takeaways:

- India is underlining again what it’s been saying for 2+ years now, that the ball is in China’s court on where things go, and it is contingent on China restoring things to where they were in April 2020

-India apparently also isn’t entirely giving up hope on the border architecture - the past agreements etc - that helped keep the peace for so long, but in the eyes of many observers have either been entirely rendered irrelevant by China’s actions, or are at least past their shelf-life and need updating (we haven't heard much on how New Delhi’s views on this, and we also don’t know to what extent the on-going military-level and WMCC talks are coming up with ad-hoc arrangements, such as buffer zones, that are in their own way updating the past methods of managing the border)

-I agree with the point that objecting to Chinese infrastructure on the Chinese side of the LAC (such as the Pangong Tso bridge) is a little pointless. At the same time, I would also add there was no clarity on the first question on how much territory has been lost since April 2020. But it seems to me that providing clarity on that, however, has become an increasingly difficult proposition, and that, coupled with other references throughout the interview, underline how politicised the China issue has become and one seized upon by the opposition to show the government’s weakness. While there’s always been politics to some extent - just Google Narendra Modi’s strident attacks on the previous government during the 2013 Depsang stand off, there was little “national interest” or showing a united front back then in what he had to say then - I do think it’s risen to an altogether higher degree which will exercise new constraints on how the relationship goes forward. I couldn’t agree more that “cold calculation and common sense” - and not “sentiment” - should more than anything drive how we look at relations including managing the border, but in this current context seems they will likely be in shorter and shorter supply.

Thank you for reading this update on where things are, just as Qin Gang arrives in India today. This newsletter will be back soon with takeaways from the visit.

I, and everyone I know in this city, has been infected. For me and everyone I know, thankfully, symptoms have been mild (ish) (fever, some really bad body ache for some, chills) and everyone I know has recovered at home after 3-4 days. I was knocked out for 48 hours but on day 4, am feeling much better although a little tired. There are signs of Beijing coming back to life as the first wave of those recovered emerge out into post zero-COVID restriction-free Beijing. A friend recently went to see Avatar 2 and said it was packed on a weekday morning.

But that’s certainly not going to be the outcome for many unvaccinated older folks, and we are seeing a spike in deaths - not accounted for in official numbers. This is going to sadly play out across the country. There have been difficulties for many in getting fever medication. There is going to be a huge stress on medical workers and your heart really goes out to them.

It’s hard to see a silver lining in all of these dark clouds at the moment but one would be the speed of spread may mean a peak arriving faster than anyone predicted and pressure easing on hospitals so those really in need of care can get it.

I’ve seen the Indian media go all out in covering the surge here with typical sensitivity and empathy. Who am I kidding! The fear-mongering that India is likely to follow suit, an implicit message in much of the coverage showing videos of patients collapsing, is totally unnecessary, and is a reason why I wanted to send out a short post.

All I’d say is the two situations in the two countries are completely different given the wave in China is essentially a first wave for a population with no natural immunity. This is essential context that health experts have been pointing out in India but seems that lots of coverage in India seems to be glossing over.

How did we get here? December 7 saw the ending of zero-COVID - and the end came suddenly. This also followed protests on the Nov 26-27 weekend. I think there’s good reason to believe the cases were already out of control by end-November, and the end came simply because control measures couldn’t cope with the highly transmissible BF7 variant. Maybe the protests gave an off ramp and in a counterintuitive way, created political space for it.

Mike Ryan put it succinctly and I largely buy this explanation (we haven’t really had any kind of meaningful explanation from the government why it retired a signature Xi policy overnight as if it never existed, such is the way of things here):

"There's a narrative at the moment that China lifted the restrictions and all of a sudden the disease is out of control," he said.

"The disease was spreading intensively because I believe the control measures in themselves were not stopping the disease. And I believe China decided strategically that was not the best option anymore."

We’ve gone from a zero-COVID policy to zero COVID policy. Its everyone for himself. There has been no preparation for the public and the whiplash is extraordinary. I can only guess the leadership’s thinking is to get this over with as soon as possible.

Some background on the variant in Beijing, which note: has been circulating in India, the U.S., U.K. now for several months without the same impact:

Reports from China indicate BF.7 has the strongest infection ability out of the Omicron subvariants in the country, being quicker to transmit than other variants, having a shorter incubation period, and with greater capacity to infect people who have had a previous COVID infection, or been vaccinated, or both.

To put this into context, BF.7 is believed to have an R0, or basic reproduction number, of 10 to 18.6. This means an infected person will transmit the virus to an average of 10 to 18.6 other people. Research has shown Omicron has an average R0 of 5.08.

The high transmission rate of BF.7, taken with the risk of hidden spread due to the many asymptomatic carriers, is understood to be causing significant difficulty in controlling the epidemic in China.

The symptoms of an infection with BF.7 are similar to those associated with other Omicron subvariants, primarily upper respiratory symptoms. Patients may have a fever, cough, sore throat, runny nose and fatigue, among other symptoms. A minority of people can also experience gastrointestinal symptoms like vomiting and diarrhoea.

BF.7 has been detected in several other countries around the world including India, the U.S., the UK and several European countries such as Belgium, Germany, France and Denmark.

Despite BF.7's immune-evasive characteristics, and worrying signs about its growth in China, the variant seems to be remaining fairly steady elsewhere. For example, in the US it was estimated to account for 5.7% of infections up to Dec. 10, down from 6.6% the week prior.

While the UK Health Security Agency identified BF.7 as one of the most concerning variants in terms of both growth and neutralization data in a technical briefing published in October (it accounted for over 7% of cases at that time), the most recent briefing says BF.7 has been de-escalated due to reduced incidence and low growth rates in the UK.

We don't know exactly why the situation looks different in China. BF.7's high R0 might be due in part to a low level of immunity in the Chinese population from previous infection, and possibly vaccination too. We should, of course, be cautious about the data from China as it's based on reports, not peer-reviewed evidence yet.

Keep this context in mind when we are seeing the fear mongering dialled up to 11. Speaking of which, Opposition politicians are now demanding the government stop flights from China:

This is puzzling on several levels. Firstly, wonder if someone will tell the good gentleman there are no direct flights from China to India and haven’t been since 2020. Wonder if he also knows where else the variant is circulating so stopping travel from China would be essentially meaningless. There are daily direct flights and more passengers from the US, UK and elsewhere which have the same variant, and a trickle of travel from China mostly through currently limited and expensive third routes, including Hong Kong and Singapore.

Here’s a serious question: If the stated goal is to keep BF7 out of India - some science would be welcome to back up why this is needed - would he advocate closing international borders for India in 2023, as only that would really do it (note that travellers from China can anyway travel elsewhere in the world; this reminds me of early 2020, when India banned China flights very early on but most of the first cases all came from Europe, if my memory serves me right. If you look at the past three years, bans only work if they’re total and borders are closed, as they did for a time for Japan, Taiwan, China, and others, else they serve nothing.) Or is it that folks are aware closing borders is a non-starter for many in 2023, so why not make a “demand” that sounds good for the cameras but is essentially meaningless? Probably the only unfortunate effect this has is adding to a sense of alarm, which many politicians have already done on late night TV by speaking direly on how the surge in China is dangerous and India should be fearful.

Final thoughts:

Randeep Guleria of AIIMS had this to say:

“Nearly three years into the pandemic, we are in a situation where there has been high natural infection—many people have been infected multiple times—and the coverage of vaccines is also high. Our immunity is robust enough to handle the virus and not let it attack us severely. In the past, we had Alpha, Beta and Delta, all different variants, but over the last one year we have consistently seen sub-lineages that have emerged from Omicron. There hasn’t been a new variant that is drastically different. However, we need to be vigilant and have active surveillance because we do not know how the virus will behave.”

Note that China had none of the above - the first wave was mostly limited to Hubei province, and there were no major national waves of the kind the rest of the world has seen.

There’s a lot we don’t know and we may never know on the outbreak here - such as the number of deaths - and the situation is in flux. As I said, let’s all hope China comes out of this as soon and painlessly as possibly.

As many health experts have said there are real concerns for new variants emerging and vigilance and screening - which India is doing - is required but what I will say is the present alarm mongering is unnecessary at the moment — pay attention to what the experts are saying and not to scary WhatsApp videos or politicians looking to play to primetime galleries.

Stay safe.

This issue will bring you up to speed on what happened, and explain why LAC tensions, so far restricted to the Western Sector, now surfacing in the Eastern Sector, portends a continued difficult period ahead in the India-China relationship notwithstanding recent efforts to stabilise ties.

What Happened

My colleagues Dinakar Peri and Vijaita Singh, who broke the story yesterday afternoon (their report was followed by an Indian Army statement, which I’ve added below), reported this was no minor incident and left injuries on both sides. While the Indian Army statement noted this was a part of the LAC where there were mutually agreed upon differences on the LAC (an "agreed disputed area" as its sometimes described, quite the oxymoron that sums up the peculiarities of the LAC arrangement).

But that there were 600 PLA soldiers coming up into this area suggests this was
1) By no means part of the normal jostling we see or an incident that can be played down as such
2) At first glance, a provocative move by the PLA at a sensitive time in relations, and one that is mirroring moves carried out by them in the Western Sector starting April 2020 — moves that, as readers know, upended improving India-China relations, plunged ties to the lowest level since normalisation, and led ultimately to the Galwan Valley clash in June 2020.

As my colleagues reported (you can read the full report here):

Stating that the clash occurred as a large PLA patrol came across into the Indian side, one Army source said “injuries on the Chinese side were much higher than on the Indian side”. At least three different units of the Indian Army were present at the time of the face-off, it has been learnt. According to another source, a few soldiers sustained fractured limbs during the skirmish and are said to be recuperating at a hospital in Guwahati. Around 600 PLA soldiers were present when the clashes took place, the source said.

This is the full Army statement. It notes both sides have immediately disengaged from the area so there is no continuing stand-off.

As of Tuesday morning, there was no response from the Chinese side although I would expect one later today. There were many reports on Chinese social media and news sites that were reproducing Indian media reports. Former Global Times editor Hu Xijin on a post on his WeChat account quoted unnamed and unsourced reports as saying there was also an “exchange of fire” — which was the alarming headline of his WeChat post which has more than 100,000 views already — but added that he was waiting for official statements from both sides to confirm this fact.

There is no reason to think there was an exchange of fire, going by the Indian Army statement and numerous Indian media reports so far.

How it unfolded

An earlier LAC stand-off.

Snehesh Philip in The Print reports the PLA troops, as seen in April 2020 in the Western sector, were heavily armed with clubs — but not with rifles, in keeping with bilateral agreements. The workarounds to ‘no rifles’ are, however, getting increasingly cynical and dangerous:

Sources in the defence and security establishment said the clash took place on the morning of 9 December when over 200 Chinese soldiers armed with crude weapons reached the Indian perception of the Line of Actual Control (LAC), about 35 km from Tawang. The Chinese were challenged by a group of about 50 Indian soldiers who stopped the PLA advance in an area that saw a similar clash in October 2021.

Within half an hour, the Indian backup team arrived at the spot, following which a clash ensued. This clash, according to sources, started off with stone pelting before troops from both sides engaged in hand-to-hand combat.

Sources said that while the Indian troops were not armed with taser guns, they had “everything and more than what the Chinese had” to be able to retaliate. The Chinese were not carrying rifles, sources said, adding that they came in with wooden clubs and spikes with nails on them, and monkey fists — a crude weapon made of iron that is worn on the wrist — besides tasers.

Initial assessments suggest the PLA incursion into this disputed grey zone (that’s the suggestion from the official statement on differing perceptions) was planned and timed carefully, reports the Indian Express:

The clash in Arunachal Pradesh took place at about 3 am last Friday at a nullah along the LAC in the Tawang heights near a point called Yangtse in Eastern Tawang. This part of the LAC is one of the “agreed disputed areas” between the two sides, according to military sources.

Indian and Chinese troops are positioned on either side of the nullah, but on this night, some 300 Chinese troops came into the Indian side.

There were no warning signs about the transgression and hearing the sentries being assaulted, some 70 to 80 Indian troops mobilised quickly in the dead of night to push back the intruders. There was intense hand-to-hand combat with sticks and canes for a few hours, according to sources. The clash was “more than pushing and shoving”, the sources said, although it was not clear if there were any serious injuries on either side.

A similar transgression had taken place in June 2016 when around 250 PLA soldiers had transgressed into the area but no clashes were reported then. A military officer who has served in the area said there was no predicting when the PLA would carry out such operations as “the Chinese perpetually control the escalatory ladder in that area” and they do so “at a place of their choosing”.

A top source in the government told The Indian Express that this time the PLA had “pre-planned” the transgression for an “opportune” time. The location of the skirmish is described as heavily forested terrain, with Chinese troops occupying “top of the wall” positions with deep supply lines and infrastructure.

Due to snowfall in the area, this was also the time for some Indian troops to withdraw from their positions, giving the Chinese side a further tactical upper hand, said the source. A heavy cloud cover also made it challenging for Indian satellites to capture images of any troop build-up. After the clash, the Indian side is said to have used Radio Frequency (RF) signal geolocation equipment to reconstruct satellite images. The high-resolution satellite imagery is presently being analysed by the Indian military and security establishment.

Finally, the Hindustan Times reports the Opposition in India is already pressuring the government on the clash and will raise it in Parliament. The Opposition has since 2020 been consistently pressuring the government to share more details about the LAC situation on the Western Sector and has criticised its general reticence. The report said:

The latest clash… has prompted a barrage of attacks from the opposition on the Centre. The matter is likely to be brought up in Parliament on Tuesday with the Congress and other opposition parties calling for a discussion.

Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge has insisted on a discussion in Parliament. "Again our Indian Army soldiers have been provoked by the Chinese. Our jawans fought in a resolute manner and a few of them have been injured too. We are one with the nation on the issues of national security and would not like to politicise it. But the Modi government should be honest about the Chinese transgressions and the construction at all points near the LAC, since April 2020. The government needs to take the nation into confidence by discussing this issue in Parliament," Kharge stated on Twitter.

Not just the Congress but Lok Sabha MP Asadduddin Owaisi also tweeted about the incident. "The reports coming from Arunachal Pradesh are worrying and alarming. A major clash took place between Indian and Chinese soldiers and the government has kept the country in the dark for days. Why was the Parliament not informed, when it is in session?" he further asked. "The details of the incident are sketchy. What was the cause of the clash? Were shots fired or was it like Galwan? How many soldiers have been injured? What is their condition? Why can’t the Parliament extend their public support to the soldiers to send a strong message to China?" Congress's spokesperson Jairam Ramesh also said that his has been trying to "wake up" the government on the Chinese actions on the border but it is silent in order to "protect its political image".


What all of this means

In April 2020, the PLA unilaterally changed how both sides manage the border in the Western Sector by moving into 'grey zones, and now ensuring there are buffer zones there, where neither sides are present. It did so by first building up forward area infrastructure and then deploying in large numbers.

Whether or not the latest clash is isolated, and whether or not the PLA intends to do so in the Eastern Sector, is unclear given historically, the PLA preoccupation has been with the Western Sector given its Xinjiang-Tibet significance, but what is certainly clear is that India has to be prepared for similar actions. I don’t want to jump the gun here, but to me how can we not see it as further signalling of how Beijing is bringing the border back to the front-and-centre of the relationship, and seems to be clear that it’s going ahead with enforcing its claims in border areas more forcefully, and as it sees fit, regardless of the impact on bilateral relations.

Finally…

Two detailed pieces I’d recommend:

Sushant Singh reported in Foreign Policy on December 3 on the immediate challenge India faces on the China border and coming troubles in the Eastern Sector, which have rather promptly manifested themselves:

If the situation in Ladakh is “stable but unpredictable,” Indian military leaders have told Foreign Policy that major stretches of the LAC’s eastern sector—2,500 kilometers (or 1,553 miles) away—are an even bigger cause of concern. In 1962, this area was the site of a humiliating defeat of the Indian Army at the hands of the PLA. Today, massive Chinese infrastructure development and troop buildup closer to the LAC has placed India at a military disadvantage. In September, [Army Chief] Pande said when it comes to infrastructure in the area, “there is lots to be desired to be done.” Recent reports suggest at least three additional PLA brigades remain deployed in the area even after the Party Congress, further worrying Indian military planners.

On China and ‘lost territory’ (which is how they have described Tawang in particular since the late 1980s), veteran Singapore diplomat Bilahari Kausikan had this broader point to make in an interview with James Crabtree in the Mekong Review that is worth reading:

The legitimising narrative [for the China] is in fact that of an ethno-nationalist narrative of humiliation, rejuvenation, and achieving the China Dream. That infuses Chinese foreign policy with a very strong sense of revanchist entitlement: What I am doing in the South China Sea is my entitlement. That was mine. I lost it when I was weak. I want it back.; So it is very hard for the Chinese to compromise, even assuming they want to, without looking weak, because they already said ‘this is mine’. This leads them to all kinds of behaviour, foreign behaviours and so on, that is not in their interest.’

Thank you for reading this issue.