(TibetanReview.net, Jun11’25) – The long road to fully normalizing Sino-India relations after the 2020 Galwan Valley breakup continues with Chinese vice foreign minister Sun Weidong being likely to visit India this week for what will be the second high-level bilateral visit from either side this year, following Indian foreign secretary Vikram Misri’s visit to Beijing in January during which Sun and Misri agreed to a slew of measures aimed at normalizing ties, reported the timesofindia.com Jun 11.
Sun is a former Chinese ambassador to India and Pakistan.
The two-day visit will be the latest reinforcement of the improvement in bilateral ties resulting from the completion of the troop disengagement process in eastern Ladakh, after almost five years of a military standoff that wrecked the relationship. This was quickly followed by a meeting of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping in Russia in October and the resumption of the Special Representatives’ (SR) Talks on the Boundary Question two months later, the report noted.
Sun arrives for a two-day visit on Jun 12, calls on National Security Adviser (NSA) Ajit Doval to holds talks under the foreign secretary-vice minister mechanism.
Doval is expected to host the Chinese SR, Wang Yi, who doubles up as foreign minister, later this year for another round of SR talks.
Though the two sides have made some important, symbolic progress in ties that included the resumption of the Kailash-Mansarovar Yatra in the summer of 2025, and cooperation on trans-border rivers, both sides are yet to resume direct air services, something they had agreed to do “in principle” in January, the report noted.
The report said the two sides will likely also touch upon the possibility of a visit by Prime Minister Modi to China in September to cap a year of détente in the bilateral relationship.
Modi has been invited to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Tianjin but is yet to confirm his participation. The summit will be preceded by a meeting of the foreign ministers, which India’s external affairs minister S Jaishankar is likely to attend, the report said.
The visit by Sun, who served as ambassador to India when the eastern Ladakh standoff erupted, also signals an intent on the part of both sides to build upon the nascent thaw in the relationship, not allowing India-Pakistan hostilities to come in the way, the report noted.
While China seeks quick normalization of all-round bilateral ties, relegating issues like the intractable border dispute in abeyance, India wants dialogue mechanisms to be resumed step by step, in a way that allows both sides to address each other’s concerns.
During Sun’s upcoming visit, India is likely to raise its concerns related to trade, as it seeks a more transparent and predictable economic and trade relationship. Both sides in the last Misri-Sun meeting had also agreed to facilitate people-to-people exchanges, including media and think-tank interactions, which has not seen much progress yet.