BEYOND BORDERS ON INDIA-CHINA TABLE

HE meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Russia was timely for bilateral relations and sensitive to the uncertainties of the global geopolitical landscape.

- P S RAGHAVAN

Painstaking official negotiations over months resulted in an agreement on outstanding issues from the 2020 military clashes in Ladakh, which cleared the ground for the two leaders to meet.

There have been pressures in recent months from our business community to lift restrictions on inflows of Chinese technical personnel and equipment that were increasing their costs. Various public diplomacy arms of the Chinese government approached our governmental and non-governmental institutions with the same message. Sections of our economic establishment worried about the impact of exaggerated national security concerns on our growth.

The political leadership was vindicated in its conviction that it would be a strategic mistake if major transgressions of understandings on the Line of Actual Control went unrectified, even if it involved some economic sacrifice.

The Indian and Chinese special representatives have been instructed to "explore a fair, reasonable and mutually-acceptable solution to the boundary question". In the current state of the bilateral relationship and the broader international climate, it is unlikely that much progress can be made in the near term on this ambitious agenda. The special representatives could be more realistically expected to evolve and monitor effective border management mechanisms to maintain peace and tranquillity along the LAC.

From a political perspective, a resumption of this top-level dialogue should be welcomed. As two large neighbours with ambitious aspirations for regional and global influence, competition and collaboration will necessarily be called for on bilateral and multilateral issues.

The absence of dialogue at the top level opens up increased space to play one against the other, not only for our neighbours, but also our friends who have joined with us to meet the many strategic challenges from China, and whose interests are best served by unremitting hostility between India and China.