Editor's Pick: India links normal ties with China to border peace

There can be no normality in India-China ties unless the troops amassed at the Line of Actual Control (LAC) are withdrawn, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar told Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in New Delhi on Friday during talks that ended without any joint statement or agreement on the way forward. Mr. Wang, who arrived in Delhi on Thursday and met the National Security Adviser Ajit Doval for an hour on Friday morning, held three-hour talks with Mr. Jaishankar before leaving for Kathmandu. Mr. Jaishankar told the media that their meeting had a “broad and substantive agenda” and the talks were “open and candid”. He said he had “conveyed our national sentiment” on the border issue and that “frictions and tensions that arise from China’s deployments since April 2020 cannot be reconciled with a normal relationship between two neighbours.” In reply to a question, Mr. Jaishankar said, “If you ask me, is our relationship normal today, my answer to you is no it is not, and it cannot be normal if the situation in the border areas is abnormal.” He was referring to the LAC in eastern Ladakh, where around 1,00,000 Indian and Chinese soldiers remain deployed in forward areas after the People’s Liberation Army’s transgressions. “Surely, the presence of a large number of troops there, in contravention of agreements, is abnormal,” he said. While 15 rounds of commander level talks and eight rounds of a special Working Mechanism on Consultation and Coordination (WMCC) for border affairs yielded “considerable progress,” several friction areas remained, Mr. Jaishankar noted, but didn’t mention specifics, or if India had spoken of the need to return to the “status quo ante” as of April 2020. China’s Foreign Ministry said Mr. Wang put forward a “three-point approach” in his talks with Mr. Doval, saying both sides needed to view ties with a “long-term vision,” see each other’s development as an opportunity, and co-operate on multilateral issues. On the second point, he proposed reviving the “China-India plus” initiative for joint projects in South Asia, an outcome of the Wuhan meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping in 2018. He highlighted that China did not seek a “unipolar Asia” and “respects India’s traditional role in the region.” Beijing quoted Mr. Wang as saying both sides “should put the border issue in its proper place in bilateral relations and not allow the boundary issue to define or affect the overall development of the bilateral relationship”, an apparent point of difference between the two sides. With India insisting that the focus was on the border to normalise relations with China, the intransigence on the issue makes it the top story of the day. Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Head over to our newsletter subscription page to sign up for Editor‘s Pick and more. Click here The Hindu’s Editorials Heartening milestone: On India’s overseas shipments record A new era: On IPL 2022 The Hindu’s Daily Quiz As estimated by Airbus, India will need how many new aircraft over the next two decades? 809 1910 2210 3201 To find out the answer and play the full quiz, click here [logo] Editor's Pick 26 MARCH 2022 [The Hindu logo] In the Editor's Pick newsletter, The Hindu explains why a story was important enough to be carried on the front page of today's edition of our newspaper. [Arrow]( [Open in browser]( [Mail icon]( [More newsletters]( India links normal ties with China to border peace There can be no normality in India-China ties unless the troops amassed at the Line of Actual Control (LAC) are withdrawn, External Affairs Minister S. [Jaishankar told Chinese Foreign Minister]( Wang Yi in New Delhi on Friday during talks that ended without any joint statement or agreement on the way forward. Mr. Wang, who arrived in Delhi on Thursday and met the National Security Adviser Ajit Doval for an hour on Friday morning, held three-hour talks with Mr. Jaishankar before leaving for Kathmandu. Mr. Jaishankar told the media that their meeting had a “broad and substantive agenda” and the talks were “open and candid”. He said he had “conveyed our national sentiment” on the border issue and that “frictions and tensions that arise from China’s deployments since April 2020 cannot be reconciled with a normal relationship between two neighbours.” In reply to a question, Mr. Jaishankar said, “If you ask me, is our relationship normal today, my answer to you is no it is not, and it cannot be normal if the situation in the border areas is abnormal.” He was referring to the LAC in eastern Ladakh, where around 1,00,000 Indian and Chinese soldiers remain deployed in forward areas after the People’s Liberation Army’s transgressions. “Surely, the presence of a large number of troops there, in contravention of agreements, is abnormal,” he said. While 15 rounds of commander level talks and eight rounds of a special Working Mechanism on Consultation and Coordination (WMCC) for border affairs yielded “considerable progress,” several friction areas remained, Mr. Jaishankar noted, but didn’t mention specifics, or if India had spoken of the need to return to the “status quo ante” as of April 2020. China’s Foreign Ministry said Mr. Wang put forward a “three-point approach” in his talks with Mr. Doval, saying both sides needed to view ties with a “long-term vision,” see each other’s development as an opportunity, and co-operate on multilateral issues. On the second point, he proposed reviving the “China-India plus” initiative for joint projects in South Asia, an outcome of the Wuhan meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping in 2018. He highlighted that China did not seek a “unipolar Asia” and “respects India’s traditional role in the region.” Beijing quoted Mr. Wang as saying both sides “should put the border issue in its proper place in bilateral relations and not allow the boundary issue to define or affect the overall development of the bilateral relationship”, an apparent point of difference between the two sides. With India insisting that the focus was on the border to normalise relations with China, the intransigence on the issue makes it the top story of the day.  Was this newsletter forwarded to you? 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