S Jaishankar on India-China relations: ‘There will be issues but there are ways to address them’

Between India and China, there will be issues in the foreseeable future but there are ways of addressing those, said External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar emphasised that while India and China may have competing interests, it does not imply there must be a conflict.

His remarks followed the latest round of discussions in Beijing, held under the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on India-China Border Affairs (WMCC).

“Differences should not become disputes and competition should not become conflict. We do compete on many issues, but because we compete doesn’t mean that there should be a conflict between us…,” he said in conversation with president and chief executive officer of the Asia Society, Dr Kyung-wha Kang.

The EAM described the violent clash in eastern Ladakh in 2020 as "very traumatic" for India-China relations.

“We had a war with China in 1962. It took us 14 years after that to send back an Ambassador. It took us 12 more years for the Prime Minister of India to visit that country… From 1988 till 2020, while we had incidents in the border areas, we had not actually had bloodshed. The last bloodshed was 45 years before 2020. What happened in 2020 was actually very traumatic for the relationship. It wasn’t just the bloodshed, it was the disregard of written agreements," he added.

The EAM stated that there has been a noticeable improvement in the India-China relationship since October of the previous year.

“Between India and China, there will be issues in the foreseeable future but there are ways of addressing those. What happened in 2020 was not the way to address those issues,” Jaishankar said.

“From October of last year, the relationship has seen some improvement. We are working on different aspects of it...What we are trying is to see if we can undo some of the damage which happened as a result of the actions in 2020, and we can rebuild the relationship. We genuinely think that this is in our mutual interest, if one looks at 2020-2025, it was a period which did not serve them well, and it did not serve us well,” he added.