CHINA'S PERCEPTION ABOUT INDIA'S POWER ASPIRATIONS

India's actions across the LOC and in J&K made China wary of it being a perceived obstacle to its growth. The Ladakh adventurism was just a message Beijing calibrated in an awkward way

- LT GEN SYED ATA HASNAIN (RETD)

The flavour of the new festive season is obviously Sino-Indian rapprochement and for good measure. Over four years of negativity left a bitter taste in the mouth, after a reasonably flourishing and, dare one say, improving relationship we witnessed from 2014 to 2020. The temptation for analysts is to jump straight into the details of the agreement announced on October 21, 2024 and indulge in the favourite pastime of monitoring the implementation down to the move of the last soldier and the words uttered in an army-to-army meeting at the LAC.

It's actually sufficient just to leave this with the broad understanding that the two areas thus far untouched by the engagement between the Corps Commander level talks-Demchok and Depsang-have been addressed to facilitate disengagement and subsequently allow patrols to revisit the areas to which they have been prevented. It's a fairly significant development, about which speculation is bound to remain until a detailed report, along with field visits by the media, is transparently brought out by the government.

The issue on which we need the fuller consensus is the understanding that what has transpired between India and China in relation to some of the border areas is not a transformational development, as there is no guarantee how far this process will go, given China's propensity to treat foreign relations as a collection of episodic instances, some positive and some negative. It's of far more import to understand where the change in China's heart came from and how this episode of Sino-Indian relations will be viewed by the Chinese leadership and think tanks.