India-China thaw — real progress or an impression of progress?

India and China resume dialogue, but deep mistrust and semantic ambiguity cloud boundary negotiations.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will head to China for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) leaders’ summit at the end of August but attention will be focused on the bilateral relationship.

The visit, his first to China since a previous SCO summit in 2018, comes as the result of a gradual thaw in bilateral ties over the last year. Since the two governments declared the completion of the disengagement of troops at the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh in October, there have been a series of high-level visits and the restarting of religious pilgrimage to Tibet from India but also news of China blocking skilled workers from travelling to India as well as of the imposition on export controls affecting Indian industry and agriculture.

The visit of Chinese Foreign Minister and Special Representative (SR) on the India-China boundary question, Wang Yi, to New Delhi earlier this week has seen some forward movement in other areas of the relationship including announcements on the resumption of direct flights, easing visas for Chinese businessmen and tourists, reopening of border trade, and China sharing “hydrological information during emergency situations.” It is very likely that there will be incremental movement forward on some of these steps that will be announced on the sidelines of Modi’s visit to China.

The boundary dispute also received some attention during Wang’s visit with language suggesting potentially major breakthroughs. However, there are some evident differences in the language used by the two sides that should temper any further expectations on this front during Modi’s visit.

The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) announced a decision “to explore Early Harvest in boundary delimitation (emphasis author’s) in the India-China border areas”. Meanwhile, the Chinese expression huajie has been translated into English as ‘demarcation’ by the official Chinese news agency, but a Chinese foreign ministry briefing on August 18 used the word ‘delimitation’ when the spokesperson referred to “several common understandings on delimitation negotiations” reached at the previous 23rd round of SR-level talks in Beijing in December 2024. Crucially, neither the Indian readout nor the Chinese statement following that meeting ever mentioned ‘delimitation’ or related ‘common understandings’.

Further, going also by the details in an Indian statement, of the ‘Creation of General Level Mechanisms in Eastern, and Middle Sectors, in addition to the existing General Level Mechanism in Western Sector’, it appears that the approach in negotiations will tackle the boundary dispute sector by sector. The Chinese statement on Wang’s meeting with Modi also states that such negotiations will start ‘in sectors where conditions permit’ (zai jubei tiaojian diduan qidong huajie tanpan).

These latest developments suggest that a key aspect of the 2005 Agreement on Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for the Settlement of the India-China Boundary Question — of “a package settlement… covering all sectors” (Article III) — is being set aside. In an ‘early harvest’ or sector-by-sector approach, each side will have a tendency to ask for the maximum per sector, delaying final resolution. It is worth noting, however, that the Chinese statement at the end of the 23rd SR-level talks referred stated specifically, that the two countries would seek a ‘package solution (emphasis author’s) to the border issue (yilanzi jiejue bianjie wenti fang'an)” — a reference that was missing altogether in the Indian statement of the meeting, even though both sides stress that any solution had to be ‘fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable’.

It should also be noted that the references by both sides to delimitation/demarcation do not indicate an immediate start to the process but merely to ‘explore’, or as noted above, to negotiate ‘where conditions permit’.

Delimitation and demarcation are technically, different stages of the boundary settlement process but either would be a big step forward from the current situation. However, differences in language between the two sides — indeed, they did not issue a joint statement — and in the case of the Chinese even between their own statements on such a crucial development suggests that the focus is on creating an impression of progress but that this is not necessarily progress. In the absence of clarity, one must wonder if short-term considerations or a desire for novelty might not have set back the entire process of resolution.

On the one hand, this might be simply a reflection of reality — India-China relations are completely lacking in trust at the boundary and resolution is extremely unlikely for the foreseeable future. Indeed, on August 20, as the Chinese foreign minister made his way to Kabul after New Delhi to participate in a trilateral with the Afghan Taliban and Pakistani foreign ministers, Communist Party of China General Secretary Xi Jinping landed in Lhasa to mark the 60th anniversary of the creation of the Tibet Autonomous Region. Among the four ‘major tasks’ he outlined for the province was one on ‘strengthening frontiers’. That he should state this on the heels of the 24th SR-level talks underlines the hardline Chinese approach of recent years to the Tibet’s borders.

On the other hand, precisely because of such circumstances and given also the international context where both countries are under pressure from the US on trade and on their ties with Russia, India and China might find value in creating the pretence of progress than showing none at all, even as they go about their regular business of competing with each other.

Such an impression serves at least two purposes. One, it allows each country to attempt to progress on other aspects of their relationship, especially the economic, which matters to both given their current domestic conditions. Two, the impression of progress on the boundary dispute — the most intractable problem in the bilateral relationship — allows each country to signal to other powers that they are not out of ideas or limited in their options in regional and international politics. Both India and China have a point to prove to the Donald Trump administration while China must also have concerns about the potential warming of US-Russia ties just as India watches with unease a new bonhomie in US-Pakistan ties.

Modi’s first visit to China after Galwan (2020) marks a shift in India’s approach to China for now, but it is no ‘reset’. The fundamental reality of competition and rivalry in the India-China relationship is not about to change.

(Jabin T Jacob is Associate Professor, Department of International Relations and Governance Studies, and Director, Centre of Excellence for Himalayan Studies, Shiv Nadar University, Delhi NCR. X: @jabinjacobt)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.