CRYSTAL GAZING INDIA-CHINA RELATIONS

2022 closed with a fresh setback to the fractured relations between India and China after Indian troops threw out 300-strong Chinese troops who had crossed the Line of Actual Control at Yang Tze in Tawang Sector of Arunachal Pradesh on December 9. How will the relations between the two Asian giants be in 2023?

- Col R Hariharan

AFTER the clashes at Yang Tze, Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh told the Parliament, the Chinese intruders attempted to unilaterally change the status quo” along the Line of Actual Control LAC). In the scuffle that broke out some soldiers on both sides were injured. India-China relations started rapidly going south ever since China started massing troops along the LAC in Eastern Ladakh. It culminated in a clash between the Chinese and Indian troops at Galwan along the LAC in Eastern Ladakh in June 2020 in which 20 Indian troops were killed. The Galwan clash was perhaps a moment of truth for Prime Minister Narendra Modi who had invested heavily in building a mutually beneficial relationship with China. As prime minister, he had visited China five times and met with President Xi Jinping 18 times. Even after the ten-week long stand-off between Indian and Chinese troops in Doklam along the border with Bhutan in June 2017, he had met Xi twice in informal summits in Wuhan April 2018) and Mahabalipuram October 2019). They had agreed to maintain peace and tranquillity between the two countries, along their disputed border.

After the Galwan clash, in January 2021, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar had said three so-called mutuals’—mutual respect, mutual sensitivity and mutual interests—are the determining factors for the bilateral relationship. Any expectation that they can be brushed aside and that life can carry on undisturbed despite the situation at the border, that is simply not realistic.”