At bilateral, PM Modi & Xi Jinping agree to work out fair, reasonable border solution

India and China on Wednesday decided to resume their stalled bilateral relationship by tasking their special representatives with overseeing steps to ensure peace and tranquillity in border areas. They have also been asked to work out a “fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable” solution to the pending boundary issue.

The decision was announced following a bilateral meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the 16th BRICS summit at Kazan, Russia.

Modi and Xi, who held their first formal meeting after five years, welcomed the agreement reached between the two countries earlier this week on patrolling arrangement along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh. The patrolling arrangement is coupled with a plan to disengage troops from the two remaining friction spots — Depsang and Demchok.

In the meeting, Modi underscored the importance of properly handling differences and disputes and not allowing them to disturb peace and tranquillity. National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and China’s foreign minister Wang Yi are the special representatives on the boundary issue. They have not formally met since their 22nd meeting in New Delhi in December 2019. The armies of the two sides are locked in a military standoff since April 2020.

Modi and Xi tasked the special representatives to meet at an early date to oversee the management of peace and tranquillity in border areas, said the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA). “They will explore a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable solution to the boundary question,” it added.

Since the two countries don’t have a demarcated boundary, special representatives were tasked to resolve the problem two decades ago. The 3,488-km LAC is the undemarcated, and often contested, boundary. Sources say India-China have exchanged maps detailing what is their respective perception of the boundary of the “central sector” — Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. A boundary in Sikkim is also largely agreed upon. However, China has refused to respond to India, or exchange maps, in Arunachal Pradesh and Ladakh.

Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri told the media, “PM Modi underscored the importance of properly handling differences and disputes and not allowing them to disturb peace and tranquillity.”

When asked what does the patrolling arrangement meant, Misri said, “In the past for years, we have maintained that restoration of peace stability in the border areas will create space for returning towards the path of normalisation of bilateral relations.”

“The patrolling arrangement puts us on the path of reviving the relationship. The path has opened after the agreement, now we need to walk on it,” he added.

Besides the talks at special representative-level, “relevant dialogue mechanisms at the level of foreign ministers and other officials will also be utilised to stabilise and rebuild the bilateral relations,” the MEA said. It said the two leaders affirmed that stable, predictable and amicable bilateral relations between India and China, as two neighbours and the two largest nations on the earth, would have a positive impact on regional and global peace and prosperity.

“The leaders underlined the need to progress bilateral relations from a strategic and long-term perspective, enhance strategic communication and explore cooperation to address developmental challenges,” it said

Answering a question on the need for more confidence-building measures, Misri said, “Once the two sides are engaged in multiple formats, this subject will be come under discussion.”