China ready to work with India for ‘sound growth’ in ties: FM Wang Yi
China is ready to work with India towards achieving “sound growth” of bilateral ties, China’s foreign minister Wang Yi said in a year-end review of Beijing’s diplomacy in 2021 on Sunday.
Wang’s statement comes amid the dragging Sino-India border row, which erupted in eastern Ladakh in 2020 but now threatens to disrupt the fragile peace in other parts of the disputed boundary as well.
“China and India have maintained communication through the diplomatic and military-to-military channels, and both countries are committed to upholding stability in the border areas,” Wang, who is a member of the Communist party’s Politburo and a state councillor, said at a symposium on “International Situation and China’s Foreign Relations”.
Wang’s speech at the symposium was released by the Chinese foreign ministry on Sunday.
“We stand ready to work with India in the direction towards steady and sound growth of China-India relations,” Wang said in a brief mention of the state of Sino-India ties, which have plunged to its lowest in decades since May, 2020.
Indian and Chinese border troops clashed as recently as on December 9 in the Tawang sector of Arunachal Pradesh in the eastern sector of the Line of Actual Control (LAC), thousands of kilometres away from eastern Ladakh, a clear sign of mistrust and suspicion not only between the two armies but between New Delhi and Beijing.
“There was hand-to-hand fighting between Chinese and Indian troops on December 9. Indian troops stopped PLA (People’s Liberation Army) troops from entering our territory,” defence minister Rajnath Singh told parliament.
Thousands of troops remain deployed on both sides of the LAC though frontline soldiers have disengaged from most of the friction points, which were at the centre of the dispute in 2020.
Ties between India and China are at its worst in decades since the June 2020 Galwan Valley clash between the border troops of the two countries.
The 17th round of army commander level talks held last earlier this week did not yield much though the two sides issued a joint statement, promising to meet again. There was little indication of any forward movement from the joint statement.
The corps commanders of the two countries held talks on the Chinese side of the Chushul-Moldo border meeting point on December 20.
The two sides agreed to maintain “security and stability on the ground in the Western Sector” of the LAC.
“The two sides agreed to stay in close contact and maintain dialogue through military and diplomatic channels and work out a mutually acceptable resolution of the remaining issues at the earliest,” the joint statement read.
India has consistently maintained that peace and tranquillity along the LAC are critical for the overall development of bilateral relations with China.
India’s external affairs minister S Jaishankar has also said that the normalisation of India-China relations is in the interest of the countries and the region.
In November, Jaishankar told China’s outgoing ambassador Sun Weidong that the “3 Mutuals” – mutual respect, mutual sensitivity and mutual interest – should guide Sino-India ties and that “peace and tranquillity in the border areas is essential”.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping ignored each other during a photo-op at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting in Samarkand, Uzbekistan in September though they shook hands briefly at the G20 summit in Bali in November.
It’s a long and bitter way from their walks in a manicured garden in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in 2018 or the beaches of Mamallapuram, India in 2019.