Why China refuses to resolve the border issue

The aim is not only to pressure India into accepting a border on Chinese terms but also to use the issue as leverage in matters that are of concern to Beijing in South Asia

- Manoj Joshi

India’s defence minister Rajnath Singh and external affairs minister S Jaishankar visited China recently in connection with the forthcoming Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Beijing later this year, and aimed at preparing the ‘ground for a possible prime ministerial visit that could be the first in seven years.

What is striking is the different tones adopted by the two ministers with their counterparts. During his visit in June, Singh created a minor flutter when he told his Chinese counterpart, Dong Jun, that there was a need “to have a permanent solution of border demarcation by rejuvenating the established mechanism on the issue”.

Jaishankar’s tone during his meeting with his counterpart, Wang Yi, in Beijing last week was quite different. He spoke of the “steadily improving” India-China relations as a result of the “resolution of the friction along the border and our ability to maintain peace and tranquility there”. Peace on the border, he told Wang, was the fundamental basis of good relations. After the disengagement that had taken place in 2024, the time had come to undertake deescalation that would see the reduction of the additional forces the two countries had massed in the eastern Ladakh-western Tibet region, he added.

The Chinese could not have been too happy about Singh raising the border issue the way he did. As Jaishankar noted, the two sides are in the process of repairing their ties that were shattered by the Chinese 2020 misadventure in Eastern Ladakh. They have barely agreed to restore status quo ante there, and now the Indians appeared to be taking a huge leap forward by suggesting that the two sides move to settle their long-running border dispute that has prevented the demarcation of their border.