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China confirms border patrolling deal with India, but its trustworthiness remains an issue

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(TibetanReview.net, Oct23’24) –China has said Oct 22 that it had reached a “resolution” with India over issues related to their disputed Tibet-border. It came a day after New Delhi said it had struck a deal with Beijing for the resumption of the pre-2020 military patrols along the frontier which could pave the way for disengagement of troops from the two sides in eastern Ladakh.

China’s foreign ministry said Oct 22 it had given its “positive approval” to a border deal, confirming a similar statement by New Delhi on Oct 21, reported the AFP Oct 22.

“Recently, China and India have maintained close communication through diplomatic and military channels on issues relating to the China-India border,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian has told a regular news briefing.

“Currently, the two sides have reached a resolution on the relevant issues. China gives its positive approval to this,” Lin has said.

“In the next stage, we will properly implement that resolution with the Indian side,” he has added.

However, Lin’s remarks did not go as far as India’s foreign secretary Vikram Misri’s suggestion that the deal “on patrolling arrangements along the Line of Actual Control (LAC)” would lead to “disengagement and eventually a resolution of the issues that had arisen in these areas in 2020.”

India and China came to share an over 3,500-kilometre (2,200-mile) border after the former’s armed annexation of a hitherto independent Tibet in 1951. Their disputes remain a perennial source of tension. The LAC defines the de facto border between the two countries but their perceptions of where it actually runs differ, leading to clashing patrolling, frequent face-offs, and even violent brawls.

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While the Indian media described the deal on the restoration of the pre-2020 patrolling along the LAC in eastern Ladakh as a “breakthrough”, with the country’s External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar calling it a “positive development”, commentators have stuck notes of caution, even skepticism, given China’s propensity to violate agreed deals.

To begin with, Jaishankar himself has on Oct 21 advised people to exercise caution and not go too fast on speculating immediate outcomes, insisting that the agreement had just happened and there will be discussions and meetings to plan the next steps.

While Jaishankar has offered few details on the deal, a senior Indian military official has told Reuters that both countries would patrol contested points of the border on an agreed schedule.

Meera Ashar, director of the South Asia Research Institute at the Australian National University, has said similar agreements were struck before similar summits in 2017 and 2020 that proceeded meetings before Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping, referring to the upcoming BRICS summit that opened in Russia on Oct 22.

“I would read this as a strategic move rather than a serious, successful negotiation, or even a move towards a permanent resolution on matters of the LAC,” abc.net.au Oct 22 quoted Dr Ashar as saying.

The report also cited Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan, Resident senior fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, as saying that with “something like 100-120,000 troops eyeball-to-eyeball” along the border, any deal that tried to avert conflict was welcome, but added that China had breached deals designed to keep the peace before.

“The China challenge goes well beyond the border, and it has got to do with China’s hegemonic and hierarchical view of the region and the world.

“And that India doesn’t want to live in a China-dominated Asia will always be an issue,” she has said.

Likewise, Lt Gen AB Shivane, former Director General of India’s Mechanised Forces, has said, writing on the firstpost.com Oct 22, that the patrolling arrangements needed to be approached cautiously, that it will be tested by realities on the ground.

“The larger question is whether this disengagement represents a genuine move toward a lasting resolution or a temporary measure designed to buy time. China’s rise as a global power and India’s strategic partnerships with countries like the United States make the LAC a key battleground in the broader contest for influence in Asia,” he has said.

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