China media see border meet a step forward

Officers of the Indian Army and the PLA at theceremonial Border Personnel Meeting at Daulat BegOldie in Ladakh last week.

The Chinese state media is praising the opening of the fifth border meeting point between India and China at Daulat Beg Oldie in Ladakh as a major step to keep the frontiers calm.

Yet, acknowledging that the process to strengthen peace and tranquillity was being incrementally and consistently strengthened, diplomatic sources told The Hindu that it would be “premature” to conclude that Sino-Indian ties have already been fundamentally realigned.

“That could happen and we are hopeful, but we are still looking at specific and definitive markers which would indeed demonstrate and repose confidence that the relationship has been firmly re-tracked,” the sources observed.

People’s Daily , China’s official newspaper, is quoting from an article which had first appeared in the state-run tabloid Global Times , in which analysts said that Sino-Indian ties were “getting warmer in many aspects” as this was the second border meeting point to be set up between the two countries over the past year.

The August 1 designation of Daulat Beg Oldie as a border meeting point was also symbolically significant as it coincided with the celebration of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Day.

In May, the two countries opened another border meeting point in Kibithu in Arunachal Pradesh, called South Tibet by China. There have also been media reports citing the scope of complementarity and reconciliation of China’s Belt and Road initiative with India’s Act East Policy.

However, sources pointed out that the Indian side was yet to pick any clear signals, which would suggest that the Chinese position was shifting on big-ticket bilateral issues. For instance, during the meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Ufa in Russia on the sidelines of the summit of the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (BRICS) grouping, “there was no visible change in the Chinese position on the China-Pakistan economic corridor, which passed through parts of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir,” the sources observed.

During his visit to China in May, the Prime Minister had also imparted urgency to clarification of the Line of Actual Control (LAC), without prejudice to the positions held by either country on the final resolution of the boundary question.

The sources stressed that India had defined a minimalist approach, where tensions would be significantly eased if the two sides shared information on each other’s perception of the LAC.

Without elaborating, the sources pointed out that the Chinese had previously signalled a shift in their position on resolving the crisis in Afghanistan, but of late Beijing “did not seem to be particularly accommodative of Indian interests” in Kabul.

The Chinese were also following a hyphenated approach by tying support to India’s membership to the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), with Pakistan’s request, the sources said.

“The Sino-Indian relationship has definitely been energised in all spheres at the highest level over the past year but we are still waiting to scale some of the defining hurdles,” they observed.