The game of diplomatic one-upmanship over whether it was the Indian side or the Chinese that sought a bilateral meeting first on the sidelines of the BRICS leaders’ summit has become a diplomatic mystery, whose answer may never be known.
But the good part is that the about three-year-old ongoing faceoff between the two giant Asian neighbours along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh is showing signs of a thaw even as Indian PM Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in an informal setting on Wednesday.
On Friday, an Indian official source said: “There was a pending request from the Chinese side for a bilateral meeting… The two leaders (Modi and Xi), however, had an informal conversation in the leaders’ lounge during the BRICS Summit.”
On the other hand, in the regular Chinese foreign ministry briefing in Beijing on Friday, spokesperson Wang Wenbin said: “President Xi Jinping talked with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit at the latter’s request on August 23. The two leaders had a candid and in-depth exchange of views on current China-India relations and other questions of shared interest.”
There were also visuals of the two leaders in a conversation at the BRICS Summit—their first person-to-person interaction after a brief chat on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Bali in November.
Besides talks at the diplomatic level, the two sides have already held 19 rounds of talks in eastern Ladakh at the senior military commander level that has yielded effective disengagement in five of the seven friction areas. The two remaining friction areas that need to be resolved are at Demchok and Depsang. The first standoff was resolved in Galwan in July 2020, Pangong Tso and Kailash ranges in February 2021, Gogra in August 2021 and PP 15 in September 2022.
But the resolution in eastern Ladakh will, at best, only lead to the devising of due mechanism to resolve localized incidents along the border even as broader territorial issues of Aksai Chin and Arunachal Pradesh—which China claims as part of its ‘southern Tibet’—are conveniently put in the backburner.
The current thaw may be based on China’s strategy to increase India’s manoeuvrability within the Western group that is led by the US, by making available more options for India, by increasing its bargaining capacity with the US-led West.
If India-China tensions abate and antagonism reduces, India would have more capacity to manoeuvre. It will also reinforce contradictions inherent in any grouping. A warming relationship with China would therefore give more leeway to India vis-à-vis the West.
On the other hand, if India-China tensions rise, India’s ability to manoeuvre within the US-led block would get narrowed and it will have to toe the dominant US line.
There are domestic concerns too as China is under growing economic pressure with a slow post-pandemic recovery, even trade and foreign investment have been falling and the economy is showing deflationary tendencies.
On the other hand, India goes to polls in 2024 and an honourable and gainful resolution to the border impasse will fetch definite political dividends fortifying Modi’s 'Strong leader' image even further.
Modi and Xi are again likely to meet in New Delhi for the G20 leader’s summit on September 9-10.