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| India's Arunachal Pradesh (orange box) is claimed by China |
By Sarah Watson and John Chen
Unless India and China can take positive actions, they risk drifting into a growing conflict on their disputed border.
India hosted its highest-ranking Chinese military delegation in ten years November 15-17 for talks on the Sino-Indian border dispute. Despite the unusually high status of the participants in this year’s talks, the visit appears to mark only a brief pause in gradually rising tensions on the border between the two countries.
The 26-member Chinese delegation, headed by General Fan Changlong, vice chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), met with India’s chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Dalbir Singh, Minister of Defense Manohar Parrikar, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Included in the Chinese group was Admiral Sun Jianguo, deputy chief of the General Staff of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), China’s representative to this year’s Shangri-La Dialogue, and possibly the next chief of the PLA Navy.
In spite of the “star power” of the Chinese delegation, expectations were not particularly high. Following the talks, Indian media reported that both sides agreed the border was “generally stable” and that they had endorsed “concrete actions to implement the consensus reached by the two leaders on border issues.” These sensible suggestions gloss over the fact that China and India have been searching for “concrete” ways to enact that consensus, the Border Defense Cooperation Agreement, since that document was signed by then-Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Premier Li Keqiang in October 2013. The Agreement alone was not able to prevent multiple flare-ups along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the past two years.
Read the full story at The Diplomat