(TibetanReview.net, Mar08’26) – Although the ground reality at the still tense but so far multi-year incident-free border situation may not justify the painting of an upbeat picture, China has on Mar 8 called for a more cooperative approach in its ties with India, with Foreign Minister Wang Yi urging the two Asian powers to view each other as partners and opportunities rather than strategic rivals.
Mutual trust and cooperation is beneficial to the development of China and India, while division and confrontation is detrimental to the rejuvenation of Asia, China’s official Xinhua news agency Mar 8 cited Foreign Minister Wang Yi as saying. He was speaking at a press conference on the sidelines of the ongoing annual, fourth session of the 14th National People’s Congress, China’s parliament, in Beijing.
China and India must maintain the correct strategic perception, uphold good-neighbourliness and friendship, focus on development, which is the biggest common denominator of the two countries, and make BRICS cooperation more substantive to bring new hope to the Global South, Wang was cited as saying.
Also, China’s official globaltimes.cn Mar 8 cited Wang as saying, sourced from Xinhua, in a single-sentence news report, that China always places neighbouring countries in priority position of diplomatic agenda.
Referring to the recent diplomatic engagements between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping, especially their successful meeting in Tianjin last August, Wang has said, as reported by India’s PTI news agency May 8, “Building on the fresh start enabled by their Kazan meeting in 2024, the Tianjin summit brought about further improvement in China-India relations.”
The report said Wang highlighted signs of renewed engagement between the two neighbours, saying, “We are heartened to see re-energised interactions at all levels, a new record in bilateral trade, and closer people-to-people exchanges. All this has brought tangible benefits to the two peoples.”
To reinforce the feel-good factor supposedly arising from the above developments, Wang was further quoted as saying, “As each other’s important neighbours and members of the Global South, China and India enjoy profound civilisational ties and share extensive common interests.”
The PTI report noted that India-China relations, which remained frozen for five years following the military standoff in eastern Ladakh, began showing signs of normalisation after two meetings between Modi and Xi — first in Kazan, Russia in 2024, and later on the sidelines of the SCO summit in Tianjin last year. Since then, both sides have resumed visa and flight services and initiated a series of measures aimed at restoring normal diplomatic engagement.
However, the ground reality remains that India’s core concern before full normalisation of Sino-India ties – the restoration of mutual trust – still remains to be fulfilled. China’s propensity to renege on painfully crafted agreements signed after protracted negotiations between the two sides still remains largely unaddressed, as repeatedly pointed out by India’s foreign minister S Jaishankar. As a matter of fact, China still insists that the military standoff in eastern Ladakh in 2020 was undoubtedly and absolutely India’s fault, the very opposite of what the latter alleges.
In addition, China refuses to take any step towards a final resolution of the border dispute, a legacy of its illegal occupation of Tibet, calling it complex.
The most damning refutation of Wang feel-good remarks about the current state of affairs can be seen in the fact that both sides still have tens of thousands of troops amassed against each other close to their Tibet-border, even as they keep deploying more military assets and building more strategic infrastructure there, after the 2020 Ladakh border clashes.