US, Indian hardliners preventing Sino-Indian ties from normalising: China

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar (file pic)

China has blamed the United States and Indian hardliners for preventing Sino-Indian relations from becoming normal.

“The US factor has been a major thorn in the China-India relationship,” said Lan Jianxue, Director of Asia-Pacific Studies at the leading Chinese institute, the China Institute of International Studies (CIIS), in an editorial in the Global Times, a newspaper belonging to the Chinese Communist Party.

The Chinese reaction was a response to recent developments on the border and remarks made by the Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar in New York last week.

During interactions there, Jaishankar had said that Asia’s rise was contingent on its two biggest economies — China and India — getting on with each other.

He also said it was important for India’s relationship with China to come back to normal. “So I think that’s where our focus is.”

The Global Times editorial observed, “Just when China-India ties achieved some détente, India’s domestic hardline voices against China have been on the rise again.”

It pointed out that though Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his Indian counterpart Jaishankar both attended the BRICS foreign ministers’ meeting on the UNGA sidelines, they did not hold any ‘one-on-one talks.’

It said that there have been no bilateral meetings between China and India at several recent multilateral events — a reference to Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision to avoid any interactions at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit at Samarkand this month.

The editorial said that although the relationship between the two countries has not returned to normal and is not out of the `difficult stage,’ some positive trends have emerged.

On September 8, Chinese and Indian troops began disengaging in the area of Jianan Daban (Patrol Point 55 in eastern Ladakh) after several rounds of military negotiations, which is another step in the direction of border stability.

However, China has said that Indian “ultra-nationalists” believed that India had suffered a loss on the issue of border disengagement. Some also accused the Modi government of “giving 1,000 square km of territory to China.”

It said these forces had `exaggerated’ the `threat’ China poses to India to pressurise the government and oppose the reconciliation with China.

But Jaishankar told the audience at Columbia University last week that it was in India and China’s common interest to figure out how to accommodate each other. He warned that if they failed to do so, it would affect the rise of Asia.

The Indian Foreign Minister said that the biggest change that he saw in the world was the rise of China -- it had risen not only faster but “more dramatically” than India in the same time span.

Jaishankar said, “The issue for us today is how the two rising powers, in proximity to each other, find a modus vivendi (an arrangement allowing two conflicting parties to coexist peacefully) in a dynamic situation.”

But China has pointed out that whenever relations between the two countries go wrong, radical forces gain the upper hand, and there have always been evil forces that do not want the two to get close.

Sceptics within China have also asked if India was sincere about accommodating China for an “Asian century.”

Lan Jianxue said the Asian century that India envisions is a multipolar Asian world, in which India is the most important pole and where India can play a leading role.

He said India is using the so-called Asian century to pressurise China with an attempt to force China to make concessions on the border issue.

Jianxue said that by bolstering and emphasising Asia’s rise, India is trying to garner support from China as India will host the G20 and the SCO summit next year.

He said that India and China needed to come together to realise the Asian century, and this was a big challenge.

He added that if India wanted a `benign peripheral environment’ it should carefully manage relations with China instead of treating it as a relationship that can be sacrificed.

Chinese commentators feel that Sino-Indian relations need to achieve a healthy and stable development by transcending internal and external forces that try to scuttle their relationship.

China has said  that the two countries have managed to cool the border situation through consultations and negotiations, which has made some people `anxious.’  It said that these people now hope to create pressure through public opinion to hamper India’s efforts for further settlement of the border issue.

China has pointed out that since the Galwan Valley conflict in 2020, the two sides have maintained unimpeded diplomatic and military channels of communication. As a result, the border situation has been generally stable and the relationship between the two countries has shown `a recovery momentum.’

It has said that this had happened at a time when the US was trying to drive a wedge between China and India. “It indicates that the two major powers cannot be easily fooled.”

Expressing a positive note, the Global Times commentary said: “We also have confidence in New Delhi’s political wisdom and strategic sobriety.”

It added, “We believe that China and India will find a way of coexistence and accommodating divergent views.”