4 months on, India and China to sit across table. Rajnath meeting today the first

According to sources based in Moscow and Delhi, the meeting was arranged at the behest of both sides mutually to find a way out of the current stalemate in Ladakh with both the Indian Army and PLA deployed in full strength to counter each other.

Updated on: Sep 4, 2020, 20:34:32 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Shishir Gupta

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In a bid to break the deadlock in Ladakh, defence minister Rajnath Singh is scheduled to meet his Chinese counterpart, General Wei Fenghe, on Friday evening on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) ministerial in Moscow. This is the first major political contact between India and China since the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) unilaterally changed the status quo on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in May 2020 in east Ladakh.

According to people familiar with the developments in Moscow and Delhi, the meeting was arranged at the behest of both sides mutually to find a way out of the current stalemate in Ladakh with both the Indian Army and PLA deployed in full strength to counter each other. That the Ladakh stand-off will be the topic of discussion is evident from the presence of ministry of external affairs joint secretary (East Asia) Naveen Srivastava in Moscow on Friday. Srivastava has held a series of conversations with his Chinese counterpart under the working mechanism for consultation and coordination on India-China border affairs towards disengagement and de-escalation of the PLA in the contested sectors.

The meeting between two defence ministers is crucial as Rajnath Singh is number two in the Narendra Modi government and a former BJP president, Gen Wei, a former missile force commander, is a state councillor and member of the all-powerful Central Military Commission. The CMC, headed by chairman President Xi Jinping, controls the PLA.with the President as commander-in-chief.

Also Watch | ‘Situation along LAC slightly tense’: Army Chief speaks on border row with China

After this meeting, External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar is expected to meet his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi at the same platform in Moscow on September 10.

Also read: The curious link behind China’s Ladakh moves and a looming food crisis | Analysis

The ministerial-level meeting between India and China comes at a time when PLA and the Indian Army are locked in a tense posture in Ladakh and occupied Aksai Chin with the former trying to impose 1960 claim map (demarcated by a green line) on the ground and the latter clear that its claim line (demarcated by a black line) is the true LAC.

While PLA initially had made gains on the ground north of Pangong Tso in May and June, the Indian Army has nullified the dominance by repositioning on the heights overlooking Finger four on the lake and make tactical gains on south banks of the contested lake by pre-empting the Chinese troops.

“It is a game of pressure and time. The first one who blinks loses the match. The only way out is that both sides restore status quo ante and walk out of the military cul de sac respectfully,” said a military commander.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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