India and China recently pulled back each other’s troops from two face-off points on their contested high-altitude border. The move came days after the two nuclear-armed neighbors struck a deal on military patrols that aims to end a four-year standoff that has strained ties.
The agreement was reached shortly before a meeting between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in the Russian city of Kazan at the end of October.
After their talks, both Modi and Xi made pledges to improve bilateral relations and praised the recent progress towards solving territorial disputes in the Himalayas.
It signaled a potential thaw between the two Asian giants since border clashes between their troops in 2020, which killed at least 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers.
China and India, the world’s two most populous nations, are intense rivals and have accused each other of trying to seize territory along their de facto border, known as the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
Just a ‘first step’
Security experts in India welcomed the latest deal to de-escalate tensions,but say there is a need to renew efforts to find a permanent solution to the border dispute.
“Disengagement is the very first step. If and once completed at all points, it will be a confidence-building measure (CBM). De-escalation and de-induction are the next two major phases in this process and formal CBMs can only be decided after that,” Jayadeva Ranade, president of the Centre for China Analysis and Strategy in New Delhi, told DW.
“In the absence of trust, peace will be fragile. Beijing has also reiterated its ambitious agenda, which does not calm the apprehensions of the world,” he added.
Shanthie Mariet D’Souza, president of Mantraya, an independent research forum, said both New Delhi and Beijing should engage in a serious dialogue to find ways to demarcate their disputed border.
She also pointed to other problems plaguing the bilateral relationship: “The border standoff is just one of several issues India has with China. Beijing needs to be attentive to New Delhi’s concerns regarding Pakistan-supported terrorism, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), trade imbalances, and other related matters.”
Despite the latest border disengagement deal, D’Souza said there is “a lingering sense of mistrust towards China” in New Delhi. She noted that it will continue to cast a shadow over bilateral ties.
“China’s global ambitions and its strategy to increase its influence in India’s neighborhood and the Indian Ocean will consistently pose challenges for India,” the expert said.
“Both countries must work towards establishing a mechanism that allows for mutual growth through competition while avoiding conflicts. Until that occurs, achieving peace with China will remain an unfinished project,” she added.
Rebuilding trust possible?
India’s Foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar this week highlighted how the recent troop pullback marks significant progress between the two sides.
Nevertheless, he acknowledged that managing bilateral ties in the long term poses a challenge as it involves establishing an equilibrium in the disputed border areas.
“After the withdrawal of both countries on the LAC, we have to see in which direction we can move forward. We feel that the withdrawal from the LAC is a welcome step. This opens the possibility that other steps can also be taken,” Jaishankar said on the sidelines of the India-Australia Foreign Ministers’ Framework Dialogue in Canberra.
S K Chatterji, a former Indian army official and defense strategist, said that from a military standpoint, “CBMs must include weekly meetings at the battalion commanders’ level, a total ban on carriage of firearms and even sticks at the borders.”
“The three Ds formula that the Indians have proposed, involving disengagement (currently in progress), de-escalation and finally de-induction of formations brought into the zone from other places, could build trust on both sides,” Chatterji, who previously commanded a regiment in the high-altitude region, told DW.
“All told, it is doubtful if the armies on both sides will trust each other for a long time to come. Military-to-military interaction through exercises and visits could accelerate the process of building trust.”
How to maintain peace?
While vigilance across the boundary remains a priority as both nations work through friction points and consider establishing buffer zones in crucial areas, transparency is also important in managing public sentiment and reducing nationalistic pressures, say experts.
“What China and India have right now is not peace, it is the lack of hostilities. Troops have disengaged from eyeball-to-eyeball deployments but they remain in the combat zones,” Atul Kumar, a China expert and fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, told DW.
“Therefore, unless de-escalation and de-induction of troops is complete, both India and China cannot discuss how to maintain peace.”
Both countries have reached multiple agreements in the past aimed at maintaining peace and stability along their disputed border but they have failed, Kumar said.
“Therefore, a pact on paper has minimal value and both states need to find a way to institutionalize the mechanism to restore and maintain peace. What steps would be necessary to achieve that remains unknown but both sides are trying to find ways and methods,” he added.
Kumar stressed that the latest border deal presents an opportunity for both sides to de-escalate the tensions.
“The meetings and discussions to further resolve conflictual issues are about to begin. If not a resolution, China and India need to find a practical compromise to coexist together and prevent conflicts from emerging,” he said.