In what is being reported as a major diplomatic breakthrough, India and China have completed the disengagement process at the border. While this is certainly a significant achievement toward realising normalisation between the two countries, experts still suggest that India must exercise caution as it engages further with China for complete resolution of tensions that began in 2020.
India’s Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said on October 21st that several rounds of talks between diplomatic and military negotiators of India and China in the past few weeks have led to the reaching of an agreement on “patrolling arrangements along the Line of Actual Control in the India-China border areas leading to disengagement and a resolution of the issues that had risen in these areas in 2020.”
Shortly after Misri’s remarks, India’s External Affairs Minister (EAM) S. Jaishankar further elaborated on India and China’s disengagement process, while speaking during a media event.
“What the Foreign Secretary has said is what I can also say, that we reached an agreement on patrolling and with that we have gone back to where the situation was in 2020. We can say that the disengagement process with China has been completed…There are areas which for various reasons after 2020… because they had blocked us so we had blocked them. So what has happened is we have reached an understanding which will allow the patrolling (sic),” Jaishankar was quoted as saying by ANI news agency.
A day after the announcement from India about the patrolling arrangement reached with China, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian also confirmed that the two sides had “reached resolutions on issues concerning the border area following close communication through diplomatic and military channels.”
The announcements of the patrolling arrangement from both sides were widely seen as setting the stage for talks between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, on the sidelines of the three-day summit of BRICS nations in Russia that is ongoing as of writing of this article.
There have been op-eds and news articles in the past few months that were indicating a potential thaw between India and China, based on the series of diplomatic exchanges between India and China since the beginning of this year at several levels and even through semi-official channels such as think tank exchanges.
However, the most authoritative signals of an imminent breakthrough in India and China’s disengagement process came after the 30th meeting of the Working Mechanism for Consultation & Coordination on India-China Border Affairs (WMCC) that was held in India on July 31st.
Per the post-meeting statement from India’s External Affairs Ministry (EAM), the two sides had agreed on the “respect for the LAC as an essential basis” for normalisation of India-China relations, which as Unravelling Geopolitics had pointed out at the time, marked a substantial shift in China’s position.
This is because, until the aforesaid WMCC meeting, there were reports of China trying to pressure India into accepting the new normal at Depsang and Demchok, which were the two outstanding areas of dispute over troop positions, following the troop disengagements at five out of the original seven flashpoints in between 2020 and 2022.
The Chinese side was blocking the Indian Army’s access to several Patrolling Points in Depsang and Demchok, and had been claiming that the disengagement of troops from the Patrolling Point 15 (Gogra-Hotsprings area) in September 2022 marked the restoration of normalcy along the LAC in the eastern Ladakh sector.
Obviously, the Indian side refused to budge, as is evident from the latest news of troop disengagement from Depsang and Demchok. So, one could say that India has won the first round of what can be categorised as an ongoing staring match with China at the LAC.
Now, there are two more to go, as disengagement is only the first step of the graded three-step process suggested by India to China for resolution of the ongoing standoff. The first step, that is disengagement, involved withdrawal of troops within close distance of each other in grey zones along the LAC and moving back to positions as of April 2020.
The next two steps— de-escalation and de-induction — would involve withdrawing troops and equipment to the pre-April 2020 levels, and this is where it may get even more tough.
Is China Sincere About Completely Resolving The Ongoing Stand-off With India?
If troop disengagement, which is only the first step, has taken four years, then this begs the question how long it is going to take to withdraw troops and equipment to the pre-April 2020 levels.
In addition to that, over the course of the past three and a half years, there has been a consistent buildup of infrastructure as well as significant deployment of troops and weaponry from the Chinese side along the LAC which has raised the level of potential military threat to India significantly.
Some of this infrastructure buildup and the deployment of troops and weaponry by China has also happened in areas which are among the seven flashpoints of the ongoing stand-off in the eastern Ladakh sector where only troop disengagement – marginal pullback of troops from their stand-off position – has been accomplished so far, as has been covered by Unravelling Geopolitics previously.
These developments on the Chinese side of the LAC throughout the course of the ongoing stand-off so far, are not indicative of a willingness on part of the Chinese side to withdraw troops and equipment to the pre-April 2020 levels. Therefore, experts have suggested that India should be cautious about China’s intentions.
“Whatever has happened is partial and doesn’t come in the way of either China’s infrastructure development at LAC or reduction in the number of troops (apart from routine reduction due to winters),” said Dr. Swasti Rao, an Indian international relations observer, in her post on X, shortly after the announcements of the patrolling arrangement from the Indian Foreign Secretary and the External Affairs Minister.
“BRICS n all is fine.. but keep caution. This doesn’t bode well,” she added. According to Dr. Rao, China under Xi Jinping only understands the language of capabilities, and problems between India and China are far more structural to be considered as solved with sudden announcements of disengagement and patrolling arrangements at the border.
Professor Brahma Chellaney, a New Delhi-based geostrategist and a former member of India’s National Security Advisory Board, has also warned India against seeing the latest patrolling arrangement reached with China as a breakthrough.
“The second and third steps would be very difficult because China has created permanent new warfare-related infrastructure along the India frontier,” said Chellaney during a TV debate conducted by India Today. “So, a return to status quo ante, both in terms of how the border looked before April 2020 or how the territorial control existed along the Ladakh frontier before April 2020 when China made its land grabs on Indian territory, is not coming back,” he continued.
Lt. Gen. Syed Ata Hasnain (Retd) of the Indian Army, who was also a participant of the aforesaid TV debate, agreed with Professor Chellaney’’s assertions.
“A lot has happened in the last four-and-a-half years in terms of infrastructure development, deployment and things like that. To roll back that entire thing overnight without a proper detailed agreement may not be possible,” said Lt. Gen. Hasnain.
He further pointed out that while escalation happens in a matter of seconds, de-escalation invariably takes years. “When you’re looking at de-escalation, I think it’s a question of really putting the pause button, and it will move very, very incrementally. One shouldn’t look at it as if one fine day, there’s an announcement, and everything is hunky-dory and resolved,” he said.
Prospects Of The Resolution Of The Current Sino-Indian Tensions
Lt. Gen. Hasnain’s remarks are noteworthy, considering this is not the first time India is engaged in a years-long tense stand-off with China. The Sumdorong Chu stand-off of 1986-87 that began during the tenure of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi lasted for nine years until the tenure of former Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao.
The said military stand-off happened in the Sumdorong Chu Valley along the India-China border between India’s Tawang region in Arunachal Pradesh and China’s Cona County in Tibet. India had set up an observational post in the summer of 1984 on the bank of Sumdorong Chu river.
A team from India’s Intelligence Bureau (IB) manned this observational post during the summers and vacated it in the winters because of the harsh weather conditions in the region. This continued for two years. In July 1986, when the team returned for their summer manning, they found that the Chinese side had erected semi-permanent structures there.
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