Is Beijing sending a message through Wang on restoring ties?

Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi may carry a message from Beijing to push the frozen bilateral relationship towards normalization.

Published on: Mar 25, 2022, 09:25:49 IST

By Shishir Gupta, Hindustan Times, New Delhi

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External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval are expected to hold a candid conversation with visiting Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi today on the state of bilateral relations and how to bring it back to pre-May 2020 days.

NSA Ajit Doval and State Councilor Wang Yi are Special Representatives for resolution of India-China boundary dispute.

While no dramatic breakthroughs are expected when civilizational states like India and China talk, the Indian side would like to hear from Minister Wang new proposals to revive the bilateral relationship, which was dumped into cold storage by PLA unilateral aggression in East Ladakh two years ago. Since that time India has maintained that the road to revive the bilateral ties runs through peace and tranquil Line of Actual Control---the bottom line of the relations with China.

Unlike the previous regimes, the Narendra Modi government has displayed both patience and determination in dealing with a rising global power like China. Guided by PM Modi, EAM Jaishankar and NSA Doval understand Chinese history and have tremendous patience in cutting through profound sentences and ostensibly lofty objectives of Chinese diplomacy. The Chinese design that New Delhi and Beijing should not get dragged by May 2020 and move to bigger goals does not cut ice with Indian interlocutors as Beijing pursues its own strategic goals with a steely determination whether it is imposing the already rejected 1959 line on Ladakh LAC or Arunachal Pradesh.

Minister Wang’s statement at OIC in Islamabad on Kashmir was a cold and ruthless exposition of Chinese diplomacy and objectives in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. That not a word was spoken against China by the self-appointed leaders of the Islamic world on brutal repression of Uighur Sunni Muslims in Xinjiang is a tribute to Beijing’s growing power and Minister Wang should take the credit for it.

Just as Minister Wang is focused on carrying the Chinese agenda forward, the Indian interlocutors are also totally clear-headed in their resolve with both EAM and NSA absolutely on the same page on India’s strategic objectives and complementing each other.

While the two sides are expected to discuss the return of Indian students and divided families to China as part of the humanitarian objectives, the real forward movement in bilateral ties will come if PLA restores April 2020 status quo ante on Ladakh LAC as this would lead to disengagement and de-escalation of the deployed forces. As of now, the PLA disengagement from patrolling point 15 or Kongka La will boost the bilateral confidence of both sides.

Fact is that there has been forward movement on LAC albeit in months after Minister Wang and EAM Jaishankar met in Moscow in September 2020 and late in Dushanbe in September 2021. No compromises are expected from both sides today as India and China have defined core interests and both understand that the other will go to any lengths to pursue them.

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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