Cautious optimism: PM Modi and President Xi meet for the first time since 2019
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: A day after China acknowledged the border patrolling agreement with India, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Narendra Modi held bilateral talks on the sidelines of the ongoing BRICS Summit at Kazan, Russia, on Wednesday, the media reported.
While details are awaited, it is their first bilateral meeting since 2019 and has raised cautious optimism about a gradual return to normal relations.
Bilateral relations between India and China took a severe hit since the military standoff in 2020 in Eastern Ladakh after Beijing’s “unilateral” actions of violating the Line of Actual Control (LAC), the de-facto boundary between the two Asian countries.
This round of bilateral conversation between PM Modi and Xi Jinping happened less than 72 hours after a breakthrough in talks – both at a diplomatic and a military level – ensuring that the status quo returns to what it was before May 2020, when the standoff in Ladakh started after the bloody conflict left 20 Indian and an unspecified number of Chinese soldiers dead.
The two countries have since been engaged in several rounds of diplomatic and military commander-level talks to sort out the issues.
The breakthrough in the patrolling arrangement came four years after the Galwan Valley clash and is likely to signal a move towards further de-escalation in a region where both countries stationed tens of thousands of troops, tanks, fighter aircraft, missiles, and more.
According to early reports, the two leaders’ bilateral meeting underscored the upturn in India-China relations following a consensus on patrolling arrangements along the LAC that had faced multiple hiccups over the last few years.
Prime Minister Modi and President Xi have had a couple of brief interactions since the 2020 Galwan clash—on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Indonesia’s Bali in November 2022 and the BRICS Summit in South Africa’s Johannesburg in August 2023. However, these were not bilateral meetings where trade, economic, and other factors could be discussed.
After the border conflict, there had been no direct flight between the two nations for four years. Visa for Chinese technicians was granted after extra layers of security and investments from companies based in neighboring countries needed additional vetting and security clearances.
The outcome of the bilateral meeting, if any, will make it clear if trade, economic, and people-to-people ties will return to normalcy.
