(TibetanReview.net, May12’24) —China’s new envoy to India, who arrived in New Delhi on May 10, appears to have expressed willingness on the part of his government to be accommodating in talks on settling the ongoing, nearly four-year-old border standoff in eastern Ladakh. India has accused China of bring inflexible, trying to create a new border status quo by refusing to withdraw its troops from new patrolling areas they have been in occupation since its mid-2020 incursions.
China is ready to work with India to “accommodate” each other’s concerns and find a mutually acceptable solution to “specific issues” through dialogue at an early date, the PTI news agency May 11 cited Xu Feihong as saying.
The report cited Xu, 60, as saying he regarded his posting in New Delhi as an “honourable mission and a sacred duty” to improve and advance the bilateral ties.
“China is ready to work with India to accommodate each other’s concerns, find a mutually acceptable solution to specific issues through dialogue at an early date, and turn the page as soon as possible,” Xu has said.
The post of the Chinese ambassador in New Delhi has been lying vacant for 18 months before the appointment of Xu, who ranks as an Assistant Minister.
Relations between the two countries hit a new low ever since the eastern Ladakh border standoff erupted on May 5, 2020, following a violent clash in the Pangong Tso (lake) area. The two sides have so far held 21 rounds of Corps Commander-level talks to resolve the standoff, the report noted.
India has been pressing the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to disengage from the Depsang and Demchok areas, persistently making it clear that there could not be a restoration of normalcy in bilateral relations so long as the border situation remained abnormal.
The report cited the Chinese military as saying that so far, the two sides had agreed to disengage from four points, namely the Galwan Valley, the Pangong Lake, Hot Springs, and Jianan Daban (Gogra).
Earlier, in what was seen as a softening of India’s tone or stand on its defiant posture on the tense Tibet-border situation with China, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said the two sides should “urgently address the prolonged situation on our borders so that the abnormality in our bilateral interactions can be put behind us”.
“I hope and believe that through positive and constructive bilateral engagement at the diplomatic and military levels, we will be able to restore and sustain peace and tranquillity in our borders,” Modi had added in an interview published Apr 10 by the US magazine Newsweek.
Xu has referred to these remarks from Modi, saying “I noted Prime Minister Modi’s comments on the importance of China-India ties, and the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson responded to that right afterwards.”
However, Xu has then referred to China’s oft repeated stand, which India has pointedly rejected so far. “The Chinese side always believes that China-India ties should not be defined by any single issue or area; the boundary question is not the entirety of the relationship.
“Speaking at the Indian Council of World Affairs in September 2014, President Xi Jinping said that we must not focus our attention only on differences and forget about our friendship and cooperation, still less should we allow the differences to stand in the way of our development and interfere with the overall growth of bilateral relations,” Xu has said.