India’s
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh in conversation with his Chinese
counterpart Li Shangfu In New Delhi. A Chinese scholar’s analysis of
events leading up to the Galwan Valley clash. Pakistan Army chief
General Syed Asim Munir’s trip to Beijing. Chinascope looks at a tense week in India-China relations as both sides talk past each other.
China over the week
The deep mistrust between India and China was on display when Li
Shangfu met with Rajnath Singh on the sidelines of the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization summit in New Delhi. There was no handshake or
exchange of pleasantries between the two defence ministers.
While China called the LAC situation ‘generally stable’, Rajnath
Singh sent a stern message to Beijing, saying the overall bilateral
relations are at stake because of the tensions at the border.
“Violation of existing agreements has eroded the entire basis of
bilateral relations, and disengagement at the border will logically be
followed with de-escalation,” Singh said.
Instead, Li Shangfu encouraged India to take a ‘long-term view’ and
‘put the border issue at an appropriate place in bilateral relations’.
“The two sides should take a comprehensive, long-term and strategic
perspective on bilateral relations and mutual development and jointly
contribute to world and regional peace and stability. At present, the
situation on the China-India border is generally stable. The two sides
have maintained communication through military and diplomatic channels,”
said Li.
The word ‘disengagement’ has slowly disappeared from China’s official
statements on the border stand-off as Beijing appears to offer New
Delhi to accept the ‘new normal’.
The two sides now look poles apart in their interpretation of the
status in Eastern Ladakh. The divergence is likely to grow as Beijing
has blamed India for violating the past agreement as the root cause of
the Galwan clash.
“In China’s view, the Galwan Valley incident is the inevitable result
of India’s long-term violation of the 1993, 1996, and even 2005 and
2013 agreements,” wrote Hu Shisheng, director of the South Asia Institute of the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations.
The CICIR is a public-facing think tank of China’s foreign
intelligence agency, the Ministry of State Security. Hu’s statement on
India-China relations merits attention as Beijing officially makes
unremarkable statements regarding the border dispute.
“If we want to talk about ‘recovery’, we must first highlight India’s
continuous erosion of the ‘Line of Actual Control on November 7, 1959’
that China challenged as early as 1959 in the past 60 years. If the
Indian side insists on talking about the so-called ‘restoration of the
status quo’, then we must make it clear to India when the ‘status quo’
referred to here is appropriate, and it cannot be based solely on the
Indian side’s timeline. Our military’s series of operations in 2020 have
actually effectively curbed India’s border encroachment for more than
half a century,” added Hu.
The Chinese side rarely admits that Beijing carried out a special
‘military operation’ in 2020, leading to the stand-off – Hu just did
that in a lengthy post on his personal Weibo account. Hu takes a pessimistic view of India-China relations going forward.
“As a result, it will be difficult for China-India relations to get
out of the sluggish state of ‘three deficiencies’, that is, lack of
forward momentum, lack of normal cooperation, and lack of strategic
mutual trust.”
I have summarised Hu Shisheng’s views in a Twitter thread.
We can only guess what was said during the tense meeting between the two defence ministers.
But some Indian officials have given details of the talks in an interview with The Guardian.
“The PLA officers are generally curt to us during these meetings,” an Indian official told the paper on condition of anonymity.
The difficulty of translating Chinese officials during these
bilateral meetings is a well-known fact. But an official expressed
frustration over not understanding the People’s Liberation Army officers
as they mostly converse in Mandarin with very little English used
during these meetings.
“These meetings turn frustrating for us as the Chinese officers speak
mostly Mandarin, which we cannot understand. They remain very
economical with English,” said an Indian official.
The Chinese state media has repeated another official position that
the border dispute is a legacy issue used by outsiders to create a
‘security dilemma’ for India.
“Outsiders left behind a legacy of disputed borders, and outsiders
are now using it to create greater security dilemmas for India,” said an op-ed in China Daily.
The hashtag “Li Shangfu meets Indian Defence Minister” trended on
Weibo. The hashtag was viewed over 2.4 million times. Another hashtag,
“China-India Defense Minister Meeting” was viewed over 1.3 million times
on Weibo.
While Li Shangfu was in New Delhi for the SCO summit, Pakistan’s Army
chief General Asim Munir visited Beijing, where he met with General
Zhang Youxia, Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission.
“Chinese military is willing to work with the Pakistani military to
further deepen and expand practical cooperation, continuously push the
mil-to-mil relationship to a higher level, and jointly safeguard the
common interests of the two countries, as well as the regional peace and
stability,” said General Zhang.
The diplomatic relations between India and China were also front and centre over the past week in Beijing.
India’s new ambassador to China, Pradeep Kumar Rawat, finally presented
his credentials to President Xi Jinping. Though Ambassador Rawat
assumed the charge as the next ambassador to the People’s Republic of
China in March 2022, he couldn’t officially present his credentials to
President Xi because of the Covid-related restrictions.
Even the US’s new ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns, presented his
credentials along with a list of other recently appointed ambassadors.
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Experts this week
“In general, the US and Western countries are fighting and opposing
India, and the trend of restricting and containing India has become very
obvious today. The US and the West are using India to contain China,
but they are also afraid that India will grow up to be the second China;
India has actually been gradually tied to the chariot by the Americans,
becoming a junior partner or cannon fodder for the US side, but the
Indians themselves don’t know it yet,” said Liu Zongyi, Research Fellow, Shanghai Institute of International Studies, in his column for Guancha.
The author is a columnist and a freelance journalist. He was
previously a China media journalist at the BBC World Service. He is
currently a MOFA Taiwan Fellow based in Taipei and tweets @aadilbrar.
Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant)
