23-07-2025
Why China refuses to resolve the border issue
India's defence minister Rajnath Singh and external affairs minister S Jaishankar visited China recently in connection with the forthcoming Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Beijing later this year, and aimed at preparing the ground for a possible prime ministerial visit that could be the first in seven years.
What is striking is the different tones adopted by the two ministers with their counterparts. During his visit in June, Singh created a minor flutter when he told his Chinese counterpart, Dong Jun, that there was a need 'to have a permanent solution of border demarcation by rejuvenating the established mechanism on the issue'.
Jaishankar's tone during his meeting with his counterpart, Wang Yi, in Beijing last week was quite different. He spoke of the 'steadily improving' India-China relations as a result of the 'resolution of the friction along the border and our ability to maintain peace and tranquility there.' Peace on the border, he told Wang, was the fundamental basis of good relations. After the disengagement that had taken place in 2024, the time had come to undertake de-escalation that would see the reduction of the additional forces the two countries had massed in the eastern Ladakh-western Tibet region, he added.
The Chinese could not have been too happy about Singh raising the border issue the way he did. As Jaishankar noted, the two sides are in the process of repairing their ties that were shattered by the Chinese 2020 misadventure in Eastern Ladakh. They have barely agreed to restore status quo ante there, and now the Indians appeared to be taking a huge leap forward by suggesting that the two sides move to settle their long-running border dispute that has prevented the demarcation of their border. According to the government press release of June 27, Singh stressed the issue of border management and the need 'to have a permanent solution of border demarcation by rejuvenating the established mechanism on the issue'.
The Chinese response to Singh came a day later when Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning pointed out that the two sides indeed have such a mechanism, that of the office of Special Representatives who had worked out the 'Agreement on the Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for the Settlement of the India-China Border Question'.
When the Press Trust of India reporter pointed out that there had been '20 rounds of special representative talks,' Mao's reply was the standard Chinese retort that 'The boundary question is complicated, and it takes time to settle it'. In the meantime, she hoped that the two countries would maintain communications and keep 'the border areas peaceful and tranquil.
The Political Parameters agreement was signed a quarter century ago in 2005, and the two Special Representatives have held 23 rounds of meetings, the last in December 2024. The meeting of the Chinese Special Representative Wang Yi (who is also foreign minister) and his Indian counterpart, Ajit Doval, in Beijing in June, was at the sidelines of an SCO meeting. They did not take the opportunity to meet as the Special Representatives whose stated task is to resolve the border issue.
The Political Parameters Agreement was indeed a far-reaching one. It certified that the two sides were seeking to resolve their boundary question not through historical claims and maps, but on 'political' grounds. Article III of the agreement said that both sides should make mutually acceptable adjustments to their respective positions 'to arrive at a package settlement'.
Articles IV and VII seemed to suggest that the framework suggested would essentially freeze the border on an 'as is where is' basis — China retaining control of Aksai Chin and India of Arunachal Pradesh.
But, almost immediately, China began to walk back from the agreement. In 2006, Chinese ambassador Sun Yuxi declared that China claimed all of Arunachal Pradesh, including Tawang. At the sidelines of the Asia-Europe Meeting in 2007, Chinese foreign minister Yang Jiechi told his Indian counterpart Pranab Mukherji that the 'settled populations' part did not apply to the Tawang tract.
The Chinese shift seemed to have been occasioned by some internal re-thinking. This is related to the Dalai Lama and Tibet. The monastery in Tawang was founded at the instance of the fifth Dalai Lama, the 'Great Fifth'. The Tawang region was also the birthplace of the sixth Dalai Lama, who was not Tibetan, but a Monpa. The Chinese worry that the next Dalai Lama could well be incarnated in the region.
Since that time, the Chinese have stuck to their position that unless Tawang was conceded, there can be no border settlement. Not surprisingly, India has told them that keeping Tawang on the Chinese agenda was the surest way to block a border settlement.
Leave alone demarcating a permanent border, China has steadily refused to even clarify the Line of Actual Control that currently marks the border, creating the potential for conflict. It was the Chinese blockade preventing India from exercising its right to patrol several areas where there were overlapping claims that led to the 2020 crisis in eastern Ladakh.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi tried to persuade the Chinese in 2014 and 2015 to clarify these points on the LAC, but to little avail. The first time was when Xi Jinping visited India in October 2014, and the second was when Modi made a return visit in May 2015.
The only conclusion that arises from the Chinese equivocation on permanently settling the border is that they want to keep open a means of stoking conflict with India. The aim is to not only pressure New Delhi to accept a border on Chinese terms, but also use it as leverage against India in relation to Chinese interests in South Asia.
Manoj Joshi is a distinguished fellow, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi. The views expressed are personal.
