 |
| Disputed Arunachal Pradesh shown in box (File Photo) |
By Ankit Panda
For the first time since Narendra Modi came to power, India and China will hold high-level border negotiations.
India and China will hold direct negotiations about their border dispute this week — the first such talks since Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power in India’s general elections last May. Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi and Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval are meeting this week, just six months after Chinese President Xi Jinping visited New Delhi. During Xi’s trip to India, both he and Modi indicated their seriousness about beginning talks in earnest on resolving the border dispute between the two countries. India and China, Asia’s two largest states, share a 3,380-kilometer border. There are currently two major disputed territories: Aksai Chin, which China administers but India claims, and Arunachal Pradesh, which India administers as a state in the India Union but China claims.
It remains to be seen if this round of high-level border talks will yield any real progress. Though both Modi and Xi have amicably raised the border issue to the top of the India-China bilateral agenda, both governments continue to make moves that render a long-term resolution of the disputes untenable. On the Indian side, Chinese border incursions remain a major irritant. The most serious incursion in recent history took place in April 2013, when a People’s Liberation Army platoon set up camp for nearly three weeks on the Indian side of the Line of Actual Control (LoAC). Similarly, Xi Jinping’s inaugural trip to Narendra Modi’s India in September 2014 was overshadowed by a similar incursion.
Read the full story at The Diplomat