(TibetanReview.net, Oct28’25) – China has described the resumption of direct flight services between it and India on Oct 26 after a gap of more than five years as a ‘positive step’ and a ‘very important day’ for bilateral relations, marking normalisation and progress in diplomatic ties. However, India’s former foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal has struck a note of caution, saying Beijing is yet to show any willingness to acknowledge their long history of hostility towards India.
An editorial in China’s globaltimes.cn Oct 27 called the restoration of direct flights only the first step toward getting China-India relations back on track. It rightly said there were still many areas of exchange that needed to be revived, but did not dwell on its own actions which led to the prolonged freeze in ties between the two sides.
The globaltimes.cn editorial said, “Over the past five years, various aspects of China-India relations, including visas, academic exchange, cultural engagement, and border trade, have been severely affected or even ‘frozen.’ Many channels between the two sides still await normalization. The e-visa channel for Chinese travellers to India remains suspended, very few Chinese students successfully obtain Indian visas, and several bottlenecks in border trade have yet to be cleared. It can be said that currently, China is essentially ‘unilaterally opening up’ to India, while India has only opened a very small ‘seam of the door’ to China. Considering the two countries’ combined market size of over 2.8 billion people and demand for exchanges, bilateral engagement still has significant room for growth.”
China officially blames India for everything that has gone wrong in ties between the two sides, including for the Galwan Vally clash of Jun 2020. However, India points out that China has breached a series of signed agreements between the two sides, which led to a severe loss of trust, and which explains why normalising ties remains painstakingly slow.
Nevertheless, according to the globaltimes.cn editorial, India’s China policy has for years been “constrained by certain cognitive biases. Some Indian politicians stubbornly view China as a ‘main competitor’ or even an ‘imaginary adversary,’ allowing anxiety over a ‘zero-sum game’ to dominate their policy mind-set, preventing a pragmatic and rational improvement in relations with China.”
The editorial also suggested that India’s policy towards China hardened on account of what it sees as role imposed on New Delhi by the West in the “Indo-Pacific chess game.”
While China thus feels that India should take steps to further normalize bilateral ties, India says the ball is squarely in China’s court.
According to Sibal, it is China’s unwillingness to acknowledge their long history of hostility towards India which is the main reason why the lack of trust remains and with it the difficulty in restoring normal bilateral ties.
“As usual, no willingness to acknowledge the long history of their hostile acts against India. China needs to properly introspect about their responsibility in striking periodic blows on ties with India,” businesstoday.in Oct 28 quoted Sibal as saying about Beijing, which is a strong ally of India’s arch-enemy Pakistan.
The lack of trust is reinforced by reports of China’s continued strengthening of military asset deployments and infrastructure building near the Indian border in Tibet. These include, most recently, reports of the building of new missile bases and fighter aircraft hangars in Tibet across India’s Ladakh Union Territory and Arunachal Pradesh state.