No immediate breakthrough but India, China say talks ‘positive’

The 19th round of negotiations between the senior commanders of the Indian Army and the Chinese PLA went on for almost 10 hours on Monday. The two sides focused on the remaining face-off points – Depsang and Demchok – along the LAC.

The latest round of negotiations between the senior military commanders of India and China to resolve the stand-off along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh failed to yield any immediate breakthrough, although the two sides jointly announced that they had agreed to resolve the remaining issues expeditiously.

The two sides stated in a joint press-release issued both in New Delhi and Beijing that the commanders of the Indian Army and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had a “positive, constructive and in-depth discussion” on the resolution of the remaining issues along the LAC in the western sector.

This is the first time New Delhi and Beijing jointly described the negotiations led by the military commanders as ‘positive’ after they started discussing the disengagement of troops from the face-off points at Depsang and Demchok after resolving the stand-off in other areas along the disputed boundary between the two neighbouring nations.

The 19th round of negotiations between the commanders of the Indian Army and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) was held at the Chushul-Moldo border meeting point on the LAC in eastern Ladakh on Monday. They focussed on reaching an agreement on the disengagement of the front-line troops from the face-off points along the LAC in Depsang and Demchok.

The two sides refrained from announcing any immediate breakthrough. They, however, jointly issued a press release on Tuesday, unlike the previous round of negotiations, which had taken place on April 23 and ended with both coming out with separate readouts from New Delhi and Beijing.

The military commanders of the two sides exchanged views in an open and forward-looking manner “in line with the guidance provided by the leadership”, according to the joint press-release issued after the latest round of negotiations.

They agreed to resolve “the remaining issues in an expeditious manner and maintain the momentum of dialogue and negotiations through military and diplomatic channels”.

“In the interim, the two sides agreed to maintain the peace and tranquillity on the ground in the border areas,” New Delhi and Beijing stated in the joint press release.

The joint press-release did not elaborate on the “guidance” issued by the leaders of the two nations. Beijing recently claimed that when Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Chinese President Xi Jinping had met at a dinner during the G20 summit at Bali in Indonesia, they had reached an important consensus.

New Delhi had earlier claimed that the two leaders had only exchanged greetings in Bali. But after the revelations by the Chinese government, the Ministry of External Affairs of the Government of India too said that the two leaders had spoken of the need to stabilise the bilateral relations.

The 19th round of negotiations between the senior commanders of the Indian Army and the Chinese PLA went on for almost 10 hours on Monday.

The military commanders returned to the table of negotiation after almost four months with New Delhi and Beijing discussing the possibility of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping having a bilateral meeting on the sideline of the BRICS summit, which would be hosted by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in Johannesburg from August 22 to 24. Modi is also expecting to host Xi in New Delhi on September 9 and 10 – for the G20 summit that the Indian prime minister will chair.

The relations between New Delhi and Beijing nosedived ever since the stand-off between the Indian Army and the Chinese PLA along the LAC – the de facto boundary between the two neighbouring nations – in eastern Ladakh started in April-May 2020.

To avert the awkward spectacle of the prime minister hosting the Chinese president amid the continuing military stand-off along the LAC, New Delhi was keen on a meeting between the two leaders in Johannesburg and of late had back-to-back high-level contacts with Beijing.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar had a meeting with Wang Yi, the director of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee Foreign Affairs Commission, on the sideline of an East Asia Summit conclave in Jakarta on July 14.

The two sides followed it up with a meeting between Wang and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval on the sideline of a BRICS meeting in Johannesburg on July 24. Wang was a day later reappointed as the foreign minister of China, with Qin Gang, who had succeeded him on December 30, being removed.

Though protracted negotiations led to the mutual withdrawal of troops by both the Indian Army and the Chinese PLA from some of the face-off points along the LAC, like Galwan Valley, the northern and southern banks of Pangong Tso, Gogra Post and Hot Springs, the stand-off could not be resolved completely so far.

The PLA troops deployed in Depsang, well inside the territory of India along the LAC with China, are still continuing to block the Indian Army’s access to Patrolling Points 10, 11, 12, 12A and 13. A face-off is also continuing in Demchok. Beijing has of late been claiming that the mutual withdrawal of troops by the Chinese PLA and the Indian Army from Patrolling Point 15 (Gogra-Hotsprings area) in September 2022 marked the restoration of normalcy along the LAC in eastern Ladakh.

China’s claim appears to be an attempt to subtly build up pressure on India to accept the “new normal” in Depsang and Demchok areas.