China Needs to Seize the Moment with India

It's a rare window to move beyond suspicion and forge a stable Asian partnership. The key is to prevent a backslide.

- Ravi Velloor

Watching Chinese President Xi Jinping speak in Tianjin on Aug 31, there was a sense of deja vu. "The international situation is both fluid and chaotic," Mr Xi said, looking across the table at India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"It is the right choice for both sides to be friends who have good neighbourly and amicable ties, partners who enable each other's success, and to have the dragon and the elephant dance together." For his part, Mr Modi said he was committed to "progressing" relations based on mutual respect, trust and sensitivities. India's leader was on his first visit to China in seven years. More importantly, it was Mr Modi's first visit since the Chinese and Indian armies clashed in the high Himalayas in mid-2020, with lives lost on both sides, leading to a five-year stand-off.

A key decision announced after the summit was that the two nations are "development partners, not rivals, and their differences should not become disputes".

It is a rare moment to make headway. With US President Donald Trump seemingly cancelling his India trip for the Quad summit, Beijing should seize this unique opportunity to woo back the world's most populous nation from the deep freeze that ties went into after their militaries clashed in the high Himalayas five years ago.

It should do so at least because Mr Modi is the only political figure in his country with the aura and legitimacy to allow the gives and takes to effect a lasting settlement to the thorny border issue.

But the promise of "Chindia" has too often been laid waste on the sands of historical memory, global geopolitics and regional ambitions.

A FAMILIAR DANCE?

In 2005, when then Premier Wen Jiabao visited India, he spoke ebulliently of the two countries being "twin pagodas". When China and India shake hands, Mr Wen had told then Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, "the whole world will be watching".