Détente delusion: From Wuhan to Tianjin via Galwan

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will have a bilateral meeting with President Xi Jinping ahead of the SCO summit. Will the ‘Tryst in Tianjin’ lead to a reset in ties?

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was hosting Premier Wen Jiabao in New Delhi in April 2005 when M K Narayanan and Dai Bingguo, the special representatives of the two governments, signed the Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for the Settlement of the India-China Boundary Question. Singh’s predecessor, A B Vajpayee, and Wen had, in June 2003, agreed to appoint special representatives to negotiate the “framework of a boundary settlement” from the “political perspective of the overall bilateral relations”.

Fast forward to 2017. Beijing’s envoy to New Delhi, Luo Zhaohui, proposed an early harvest deal on the less contentious stretches of the boundary, before moving on to settle the more contentious ones. New Delhi cold-shouldered the proposal, citing that the 2005 agreement, which had categorically stated that India and China “should, in the spirit of mutual respect and mutual understanding, make meaningful and mutually acceptable adjustments to their respective positions” to “arrive at a package settlement to the boundary question”. “The boundary settlement must be final, covering all sectors of the India-China boundary,” Article III of the 2005 agreement had stipulated.

Fast forward again; through the India-China stand-off in the Doklam Plateau in June-August 2017; through the brief period of lull between April 2018 and October 2019, when the bonhomie between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping was put on public display at Wuhan in central China in April 2018 and at Mamallapuram near Chennai in southern India in October 2019; through the June 15, 2020, violent face-off between soldiers of the two nations in Galwan Valley; and through the 2020-2024 stand-off all along the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh. As India’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, the current special representatives of the two nations for boundary negotiations, met in New Delhi on August 19, the two sides agreed to “explore early harvest in boundary delimitation in the India-China border areas”. Beijing could finally make New Delhi change its stand, although the 2005 agreement had ruled out a piecemeal resolution of the boundary dispute.

The 2005 agreement marked the first of the three steps that the two sides had earlier agreed upon for the resolution of the protracted boundary dispute. It was to be followed by a framework for settlement – a result of the actual give-and-take negotiation – and final demarcation of the boundary. The two sides, however, could not make much headway in the negotiation on the framework since 2005.

What Beijing calls an ‘early harvest’ deal is in fact an India-China agreement, which will replace the 1890 convention between China and Great Britain and settle the boundary in the Sikkim Sector. But New Delhi was reluctant to go for an early harvest deal on the Sikkim Sector in the past, not only because it might turn out to be a constraint for itself in the negotiation for settlement in the western, middle and eastern sectors, but also because such a deal might give China the strategic edge it was looking for in the China-India-Bhutan trijunction boundary point and make the ‘Chicken Neck’ corridor linking India’s northeastern region with its mainland vulnerable to an incursion by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. Besides, India and China had agreed in 2012 to settle the trijunction boundary point in consultation with Bhutan. If New Delhi clinches a deal with Beijing on the trijunction point without involving Thimphu, China may find it easier to settle its boundary dispute with Bhutan on its own terms and gain a strategic edge against India.

Wang’s meetings with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Doval in New Delhi on August 18 and 19 were aimed at setting the stage for Modi’s meeting with Xi in Tianjin in northern China on Sunday – the second between the two leaders after the October 21, 2024, deal between the Indian Army and the Chinese PLA for patrolling in Depsang and Demchok was endorsed by both sides as the end of the four-and-a-half-year-long military stand-off along the LAC. The resumption of the annual pilgrimage organised by the Government of India to Kailash Mansarovar in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China after a five-year-long hiatus, the move to restart the border trade and the direct flights between the two countries, and China agreeing to allow export of fertiliser, rare earth minerals and tunnel boring machines to India, were highlighted as significant breakthroughs in efforts made by the two sides to bring the derailed ties back on track over the past 10 months.

There has not been much progress on de-escalation or the withdrawal of the large number of troops deployed in the rear areas along the disputed boundary since April-May 2020. The two sides have not yet discussed the issue of lifting the moratorium on patrolling in the buffer zones, which had been mutually created in Galwan Valley, the northern and southern banks of Pangong Tso, Gogra Post and Hot Springs areas in eastern Ladakh, to clinch deals for the withdrawal of frontline troops from the face-off points along the LAC between 2020 and 2024.

What should also make New Delhi cautious while trying to mend fences with Beijing is the communist country’s overt and covert support to Islamabad after the April 22 carnage in J&K, and during India’s ‘Operation Sindoor’ targeting terrorist camps in Pakistan and areas under illegal occupation of Pakistan, as well as the during the consequent May 7-10 military flare-up between the two South Asian neighbours. Beijing also refrained from making any commitment to address India’s concerns over the huge dam that China started building on the lower reaches of Yarlung Tsangpo (Brahmaputra in Tibet).

Beijing’s bid to mediate between the Taliban regime in Kabul and Islamabad and extend the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which passes through India’s territory illegally occupied by Pakistan, to Afghanistan, as well as attempts to spread its geopolitical influence around India, should also be factored in as New Delhi walks the extra mile for a détente with Xi’s ‘Middle Kingdom’.

President Donald Trump’s tariff tirade is being cited to justify India’s move for a rapprochement with China. But Trump was not even re-elected as the United States President when Modi met Xi in Kazan in Russia on October 23, 2024, and agreed with him that “stable, predictable, and amicable bilateral relations between India and China, as two neighbours and the two largest nations on earth, would have a positive impact on regional and global peace and prosperity” and would also “contribute to a multi-polar Asia and a multi-polar world”.

New Delhi made such attempts for a reset in bilateral relations with Beijing several times in the past – in September 2014, when the two leaders sat on a swing on the Sabarmati River Front in Ahmedabad, in April 2018, when they took a boat ride on East Lake in Wuhan, and in October 2019, when they sipped coconut water on the shores of Bay of Bengal in Mamallapuram. But the warmth in the personal relations between the leaders always disappeared along the disputed boundary in the icy heights of the Himalayas.

Will the tryst in Tianjin break the cycle and set a new course for India-China relations?