How Russia and Singapore played a part in India-China rapprochement

The full inside story of the latest rapprochement between India and China will probably never be told. Only fragments — not the whole — are likely to be in the public domain, like this article, in the predictable future. It may be left to historians to piece together what happened and how. 

Singapore and Moscow were two capitals where the tortuous way to “an agreement (that) has been reached on patrolling arrangements along the Line of Actual Control in the India-China border areas”, was reached, as Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri described the breakthrough on October 21. Misri only hinted at the meetings such as the ones in Singapore and Moscow.

However, Misri’s hint was a giveaway when he said: “I can share with you that...Indian and Chinese diplomatic and military negotiators have been in close contact with each other in a variety of forums. And as a result of these discussions, agreement has been arrived at on patrolling arrangements along the Line of Actual Control”. 

When negotiators from both sides made very little progress at formal meetings over a couple of years after the fatal clashes in 2020 in Ladakh and near Sikkim on the Indian side, a Track 1.5 meeting was held in Singapore in April 2023.

This was the first full-scale meeting between the respective national security communities of India and China in a free-wheeling atmosphere since the Galwan fighting.

The structure of that Track 1.5 workshop broke the ice, but did not make much progress since Sino-Indian government negotiators were yet to clear enough ground at their formal meetings to envision a settlement. The biggest gain from the April 2023 meeting was that both sides agreed to meet again in the same format. 

It was an important take away that officially New Delhi and Beijing signalled in Singapore their sincerity to the goal of reaching an agreement. Proof of such sincerity was that they allowed their military, intelligence officials and diplomats to freely exchange their views beyond what they could — or would — have said at agenda-driven official meetings. Thus, this Track 1.5 meeting helped to considerably overcome a trust deficit between India and China at multiple levels. 

By the time the dramatis personae from New Delhi and Beijing reconvened in Singapore in July 2024, Sino-Indian negotiators had covered enough ground to envision a settlement broadly on the lines of what Misri announced on the eve of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s departure for Kazan. There the highlight was the first bilateral summit between Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping in nearly five years. 

The July Track 1.5 meeting helped overcome scepticism within the intelligence and strategic communities of India and China over the looming agreement. The Singapore government did not host either of the two meetings. But they were ‘helpful’, according to one high-level participant who was not from India or China.

For at least two years, Russia has been engaged in narrowing the trust deficit between India and China, which became a yawning gap with clashes between their armies in 2020.

By the first quarter of last year, Russia felt confident enough to make public their role in restoring normal relations between the two squabbling Asian giants.

At the Ministry of External Affairs-funded Raisina Dialogue in March 2023, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said: “Russia is trying to be helpful. We are interested in these two great nations, India and China, to be friends.” From someone at Lavrov’s height of importance in the normally secretive Kremlin, this was suggestive of what was going on behind the scenes.

Two months ago, as Indian and Chinese negotiators neared agreement on LAC patrolling, Russia mooted a Track II meeting in Moscow under the rubric of RIC — the Russia-India-China diplomatic mechanism. BRICS grew out of RIC when Brazil and South Africa joined the initiative. 

Like the meetings in Singapore, this Track II initiative too advanced exchanges between India and China, with Russia stopping just short of playing the role of mediator.

When the Russians rolled out this Track II in Moscow, the expectation was that there would be a RIC Summit in Kazan. But discretion prevailed so as not to overshadow the first sit-down meeting between Modi and Xi since 2019.

An unfortunate fallout of the Moscow-inspired Track II, though, was that it split India’s Sinologist community. Several of its honchos said they would not go to Moscow because the entire effort was being funded by Russia. The dissenters had moral reservations about accepting Russian hospitality while the war was going on in Ukraine.

K P Nayar has extensively covered West Asia and reported from Washington as a foreign correspondent for 15 years.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.