Jaishankar in China: A cooperative Beijing is desirable, but a less uncooperative one is India's best bet

Indian Express

17-07-2025

Written by Udayan Das
For the first time in five years, since the 2020 standoff along the Line of Actual Control, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar travelled to China and met President Xi Jinping, his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi and Vice President Han Zheng, before heading off to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation's Council of Foreign Ministers (SCO-CFM) meet.
The meeting is consistent with the steps taken by New Delhi and Beijing since late last year to restore some normalcy to bilateral ties. This started with the Modi-Xi meeting on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit in Kazan in October 2024, followed by a flurry of high-level meetings, including trips to China by National Security Advisor Ajit Doval in December 2024 and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh in June 2025.
Evidently, we are witnessing the renegotiation of a new order on partly new foundations. The earlier order was facilitated through the Border Peace and Tranquillity Agreement in 1993, which agreed to incrementally resolve the boundary question through the maintenance of peace and status quo on the borders. As the treaty brought India and China to the table, it built a modicum of trust and transparency that allowed other avenues like trade to develop.
This order, however, was broken with the skirmishes in Galwan five years ago. Compared to the presence of a bulwark of institutional commitments and operational trade, the new order possesses an unpredictability of conflict and weaponisation of trade. The road to a new arrangement, like most diplomatic formulations, would not be easy, quick or foolproof. The visit is one of the many steps necessary to create a positive foundation.
The meeting indicates India's strategy of simultaneously cooperating and competing with China. There has always been a consensus that New Delhi and Beijing need not agree and cooperate on every issue. The optimal outcome for India would be to cooperate with China wherever possible and evade conflict entirely.
Therefore, a sub-optimal outcome is more plausible for India, where they initiate piecemeal cooperation on immediate issues and simultaneously develop instruments that would restrict the chances of conflict. This would also allow both parties to find passages to de-escalate, in case a conflict breaks out. New Delhi has taken this route, evident from Jaishankar stating to his Chinese counterpart that the emerging foundation should be on the principle that 'differences should not become disputes, nor should competition ever become conflict'.
There is a clear division of impending issues that need to be resolved rather quickly, while the rest are put on a slow burner. For India, there is a third kind as well: Issues that have a bearing on the relations but are extremely difficult to resolve, and as a result, remain undiscussed.
The border question, in this context, remains the most significant and vexed. It is likely to be put aside for a while, again, as there are no immediate resolutions in sight. For India, the answer remains elusive to the question: How do you deal with a militarily superior power in a border conflict? India has initiated internal strengthening, but that is not going to provide results overnight.
External intervention remains unreliable as this is strictly a bilateral issue where third parties would not invest or engage without interests. The plausible ways are to simultaneously keep closing the gap and engage with the rival via diplomatic mechanisms. As disengagement is underway at crucial junctures of Eastern Ladakh, the onus is now to arrange a modus vivendi.
The issues that can be resolved quickly are in the domain of trade. China's curbs on exporting rare earth magnets are hurting India's automobile sector badly. The Indian government has rightly initiated incentives for home-grown solutions, but developing an alternative supply chain would take time and not immediately compensate for the Chinese withdrawals. EAM Jaishankar specifically brought up the issue of 'restrictive trade measures and roadblocks' that need to be discussed ahead.
Finally, there are issues that are undiscussed, like the case of the China-Pakistan relationship and the issue of the Dalai Lama's succession. India's consistent stand on terrorism is commendable, but that is unlikely to have any effect on Beijing's relations with Islamabad. Irrespective of India's symbolic measures, influence or pressure, China and Pakistan would continue to work according to their realist calculations.
It is unlikely that India would bring up the Dalai Lama in official discussions. While China has asserted its role in choosing the successor, India has stated that this remains an issue of cultural conventions and not the state. Despite this, China continues to be irked by the Dalai Lama being housed in Dharamsala, acknowledged as a spiritual leader by many in India.
In the months to come, India and China are likely to engage further in the making of this new bilateral order. It will not be easy for New Delhi: It has to hold its ground on many issues, continuously strengthen itself internally, and find ways to engage with Beijing for mutual goals. A cooperative China is desirable, but a less uncooperative one is India's best bet to preserve its core interests.
The writer teaches at the Department of Political Science, St. Xavier's College, Kolkata and is a Visiting Fellow with Asian Confluence, Shillong