India & China to hold meeting of Special Representatives in Beijing to discuss boundary issue
| 2024-12-17
Representative image.
The meeting is in line with the discussions between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping in October
Special Representatives (SRs) from India and China will meet in Beijing on Wednesday (December 18, 2024), less than a month after the two sides reached an agreement on disengagement at the last two remaining friction points along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the Eastern Ladakh region.
India’s National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi, who is Member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and Minister of Foreign Affairs of China, will represent their respective countries at the 23rd meeting of the SRs on the India-China boundary question.
The meeting, announced by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) late on Monday (December 16, 2024), is in line with the discussions between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping when they met on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit in Kazan, Russia in October.
“As agreed during the meeting of the two leaders in Kazan on 23 October 2024, the two SRs will discuss the management of peace & tranquility in the border areas and explore a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable solution to the boundary question,” the MEA said.
Earlier this month, the MEA said India and China had “positively affirmed” the implementation of the October 21 disengagement agreement for the last two friction points along the border in Eastern Ladakh. The MEA statement came after the 32nd meeting of the Working Mechanism for Consultation & Coordination on India-China Border Affairs (WMCC) which was held in New Delhi on December 5, 2024.
“The two sides positively affirmed the implementation of the most recent disengagement agreement which completed the resolution of the issues that emerged in 2020,” the MEA said in its statement.
“Some Improvement” in India-China Ties
External Affairs Minister (EAM) S Jaishankar provided a comprehensive picture about the status of India-China relations while making a detailed statement in both Houses of Parliament.
Speaking in the Lok Sabha on December 3, 2024, and in the Rajya Sabha the next day, he said bilateral relations between India and China were headed for “some improvement” after the recent disengagement agreement along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh. He also noted that the next step would be to consider de-escalation of the troops massed along the LAC.
“Our ties have been abnormal since 2020, when peace and tranquility in the border areas were disturbed as a result of Chinese actions. Recent developments that reflect our continuous diplomatic engagement since then have set our ties in the direction of some improvement,” EAM Jaishankar said.
In June 2020, a tense standoff between Indian and Chinese troops in Eastern Ladakh had led to a violent face-off in the Galwan Valley. Twenty Indian soldiers had lost their lives. A large number of Chinese troops were also killed though China has never officially confirmed the actual number of deaths.
The incident led to a massing of troops along the border by both sides.
Multiple rounds of talks at the military and diplomatic levels gradually led to a disengagement at Galwan Valley (July 2020), North and South banks of Pangong Lake (February 2021), Gogra ( August 2021), and Hot Springs (September 2022). But the subsequent meetings did not lead to disengagement along the last two remaining friction points along LAC in the Eastern Ladakh region (Demchok and Depsang) until October this year.
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