China gave no tenable explanation for Galwan clash: Jaishankar in US

External affairs minister S Jaishankar has said that China never provided a "tenable" explanation for its actions at the border in 2020, that India warned Beijing after it amassed troops that the situation could lead to trouble before the Galwan clash took place, and that China's violation of agreements has immediate, medium-term and even possibly long-term implications.

- Prashant Jha

He said China's actions have disrupted ties and left the relationship in an abnormal state with "high level of military tension", warning that tensions between the two biggest countries of Asia will have consequences for the world.

Acknowledging the increase in Chinese naval activity in the Indian Ocean, Jaishankar said that past governments perhaps underestimated the importance of port development by the Chinese.

He added that India will prepare assuming greater Chinese naval activity in the region, and pointed out that the relative reduction in US presence in the region had left space for "problem actors" who were more technologically adept.

Speaking to Kenneth Juster, who was the US ambassador to India when the Galwan clash took place in 2020, at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, Jaishankar offered perhaps the most elaborate explanation in recent times of India's border crisis with China, how things went wrong due to China's opaqueness and actions, the nature of the current stalemate acknowledging high levels of tensions, and the scale and implications of China's actions in the maritime space in the Indian Ocean and Quad's role in the maritime domain.

'We cautioned the Chinese': The 2020 story

When Juster asked him whether there was any explanation for China's actions in 2020 and about the future of India-China relations, Jaishankar said, "One of the pleasures of dealing with China is that they never quite tell you why they do things. So you often end up trying to figure it out..."