China cancels joint commemorative stamps with India

China's State Post Bureau on Tuesday said it had decided to cancel its plan to jointly launch commemorative stamps with India.

The announcement was reported by China’s official English-language State broadcaster, China Global Television Network, which added that “no reason was given for the decision.”

India and China had planned a series of events to mark the 70th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations this year, plans which have been disrupted both by the COVID-19 pandemic and the worst crisis on the border in decades, sparked by China’s multiple transgressions across the Line of Actual Control (LAC) starting in May.

Last week, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar told The Hindu in an interview that talks on the LAC could continue much longer, drawing a parallel to a similar military stand-off in Arunachal Pradesh’s Sumdorong Chu in 1986 that took nearly nine years to resolve.

Mr. Jaishankar said for India, the bottom line was that China had violated past agreements by amassing troops at the border and that if “peace and tranquillity” at the border was disturbed, the rest of the India-China relationship was affected.

“Complicated issues will take time and I will go for what is my interest and my bottom line. I mean, I will not be stampeded into accepting something which is less,” he said, adding that India had undertaken an “enormous military response” in reaction to the Chinese deployment.