China and India bury the hatchet...for now

India’s announcement that its four-year border dispute with China has ended should be welcome news. One less hotspot in a world on fire can only be a good thing, right?

Perhaps, though it is unclear what kind of resolution has been reached. And Beijing’s initial period of silence has done little to inspire confidence. India’s Minister of External Affairs Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said Monday that the two nations had agreed to allow regular patrols along their contested Himalayan border. A day later, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian confirmed the deal.

Relations had soured after deadly clashes in June 2020 — involving rocks, iron bars and fists — around the high-altitude Galwan River and Pangong Tso in Ladakh left 20 Indian soldiers dead, along with an unknown number of Chinese troops. Months later, the armies fired the first shots at each other in four decades.

The thaw has paved the way for a bilateral meeting between President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, expected to take place Wednesday on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Russia. The two have not held formal talks since the Group of 20 meeting in Bali in 2022, so any rapprochement would be a welcome development — and one that will be closely watched in Washington. The US has used the icy relations between Modi and Xi to draw New Delhi closer, strengthening regional groupings like the Quad, which includes America, India, Japan and Australia, and pressuring India to join in sanctions against Russia, something it has so far declined to do.

China and India share a 3,488-kilometer (2,167-mile) unmarked border, known as the Line of Actual Control, and fought a war there in 1962. Over the last four years, the nuclear-armed neighbors had moved fighter jets, artillery and missiles closer to the boundary and deployed thousands of troops in a military buildup that had alarmed observers.

India already has significant deployments along its border with rival Pakistan, as well as Jammu and Kashmir, and in the north and northeastern states of Arunachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh. Sparing its military another winter stationed high in the Himalayas would free up soldiers and equipment to be sent elsewhere. For China, removing the irritation with India would leave the Philippines as its main flashpoint over conflicting territorial claims. (Besides Taiwan, which China claims as its own.)

It’s difficult to overstate the far-reaching fallout from the 2020 clashes. India imposed strict rules that required government sign-off for Chinese investments, banned hundreds of Chinese apps, and slowed visa approvals. Both nations expelled each others’ journalists and suspended direct passenger flights. Indian protesters burned effigies of Xi, while traders set alight Chinese goods as relations hit a new low. At least 21 rounds of high-level military talks followed, and gradually, tensions began to recede. All the while, Indian firms were arguing for the curbs on Chinese investment to be lifted as they struggled to scale up manufacturing amid increasing demand for EVs, chips and AI-driven technology.

Officials in New Delhi have been laying the groundwork for warming ties for months now, with talk of easing investment restrictions and speeding up visa approvals for Chinese technicians. There is a tacit acknowledgment that India cannot advance as quickly as it would like without Beijing’s money and expertise. The government’s own annual Economic Survey report released in July argues that to boost its manufacturing sector, India has two options: increase imports from China, or attract more foreign direct investment from the country. “Is it possible to plug India into the global supply chain without plugging itself into the China supply chain,” the report asks.

Yet the real question now is whether this agreement will stick. Defense observers point to a standoff between Indian and Chinese troops in 2017 at Doklam, a plateau near the Indian border that is claimed by both China and Bhutan. Following an accord to disengage, it later emerged that the People’s Liberation Army had continued to occupy part of the tableland, building infrastructure like helipads.

There is no doubt something similar could happen here. As Sushant Singh, a former Indian Army officer who is now a lecturer in South Asian Studies at Yale University told me, the lack of detail is jarring, particularly around what territory India now controls in the contested areas. The 2020 conflict cost India over about 300 square kilometers of land along the disputed mountainous terrain, Bloomberg News reported at the time.

So what motivated this thaw? Next month’s election in the US, for one. The race is tight and there is the distinct possibility that Donald Trump will return to the White House. One less troubled relationship would suit both parties, Singh notes. And for China, an India that pursues an independent foreign policy separate from Western interests is preferable.

Despite the agreement to disengage, the lack of trust is palpable. We are still just one misstep from an army patrol — or one fiery local commander losing his temper — from another dangerous flare-up. It’s not time to relax yet.