NEW DELHI—A recent agreement between India and China to completely disengage militarily along their disputed border in eastern Ladakh was the result of complex diplomacy between the two nations, the timing of U.S. elections, and larger geopolitical developments in the Indo-Pacific, according to experts.
This diplomacy was seen not only in the military communication channels set up between the two countries to defuse tensions, but was also clearly visible at multiple recent multilateral forums.
Satoru Nagao, a nonresident fellow at the Washington-based think tank Hudson Institute, told The Epoch Times that the India–China border agreement is a significant geopolitical development in the Indo-Pacific, triggered by the Chinese regime’s changing priorities in the region. India is not currently an urgent matter for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) because it wants to focus on Taiwan, the U.S. election, and the new administration in the White House.
“India’s border claim is the same, but China accepted it this time because China was preparing for a probable Trump victory in the U.S. and it’s also bracing itself for an invasion on Taiwan,” Nagao said before former President Donald Trump was declared the winner in the November election. “China wants a cease-fire on the India–China border because it wants to concentrate on the Pacific side.”
Two days after the disengagement was announced, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and CCP leader Xi Jinping met formally for the first time since the deadly 2020 Galwan conflict—in which at least 20 Indian soldiers and four Chinese soldiers were killed—during the 16th annual BRICS summit in Kazan on Oct. 23.
No Strategic Shift
Experts said the troop disengagement simply means that both militaries are withdrawing from a confrontational stand and have made a mutual agreement on joint patrolling areas.“While Xi and Modi seem keen to patch things up and expand mutually beneficial economic interactions—China is India’s top trading partner—the border deal does not necessarily herald a fundamental strategic shift by Beijing and New Delhi,” Scobell said. “The border dispute is unlikely to be resolved any time soon as the two countries remain far apart on their respective territorial claims and unwilling to compromise.”
Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar called the agreement the result of “patient and persevering diplomacy” at a New Delhi Television forum a few days before he left for BRICS.
“There are areas which for various reasons after 2020, they blocked us, we blocked them,” he said at the forum. “We have now reached an understanding which will allow patrolling as we had been doing until 2020.”
Jaishankar himself came under criticism from Chinese state media in an op-ed titled “India’s diplomacy has a ‘S. Jaishankar problem’” published on Sept. 9. The external affairs minister had repeatedly voiced his concerns about China’s adversarial relationship with India in recent months. He had also said on many occasions that bilateral ties should be conditional and require peace and stability at the border.
Diplomacy at SCO Summit
At the 2024 SCO summit held in Pakistan’s capital in October, Jaishankar took indirect jabs at both China and Pakistan. India shares disputed borders with both countries and disapproves of the China–Pakistan economic corridor (CPEC) project that runs through territory claimed by India but controlled by Pakistan.“If trust is lacking or cooperation inadequate, if friendship has fallen short and good neighborliness is missing somewhere, there are surely reasons to introspect and causes to address,” Jaishankar said. “The objective is to strengthen mutual trust, friendship, and good neighborliness. It is to develop multifaceted cooperation, especially of a regional nature. It is to be a positive force in terms of balanced growth, integration, and conflict prevention.”
He also called for mutual respect and decried unilateral agendas, again aiming his comments at China.
“Cooperation must be based on mutual respect and sovereign equality,” he said. “It should recognize territorial integrity and sovereignty. It must be built on genuine partnerships, not unilateral agendas. It cannot progress if we cherry-pick global practices, especially of trade and transit.”
Madhav Nalapat, a geopolitical analyst, told The Epoch Times that India’s state policy doesn’t endorse the Chinese regime’s Belt and Road Initiative projects, which have created massive debts for host nations.
“India does not favor projects, which, frankly, do more harm to a country,” Nalapat said.
He said that he doesn’t expect China and Pakistan to address India’s concerns immediately, but that he believes SCO is a good place to assert India’s stance.
Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute of the Washington-based Wilson Center, told The Epoch Times that one shouldn’t overstate the impact of Jaishankar’s SCO comments on India–China relations or any type of geopolitical reality in the region.
“At the end of the day, there were no major concrete achievements coming out of the meeting, because this is a group that has some countries that don’t agree—India, China, Pakistan,” Kugelman said.
As a result, he said, the SCO Summit emphasized issues such as poverty, climate change, connectivity, and terrorism.
Security Concerns in Pakistan
Burzine Waghmar from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London told The Epoch Times in an email that two weeks before the SCO Summit, two Chinese engineers were killed in a suicide bombing in Pakistan. According to Waghmar, Chinese Premier Li Qiang raised this issue with Pakistan. Despite many such setbacks, China hasn’t withdrawn its trust in the country.“Xi had earlier pointedly urged Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif at the SCO Samarkand Summit, in Sept. 2022, to protect Pakistan-based Chinese companies and workers who have come under frequent attacks since the inception of the CPEC,” Waghmar said.
Thousands of Chinese engineers are in Pakistan working on economic corridor projects, and Waghmar said the Chinese regime trusts Pakistan’s army to contain these recurrent attacks.
Just a week after the suicide bombing, Li and Sharif celebrated the opening of a Beijing-funded airport in restive southwest Pakistan. Earlier, Pakistan had formed a special security division of the military to secure the CPEC, with a “13,000-strong contingent of battalions and paramilitary forces,” according to Waghmar.
He said that Rawalpindi, the headquarters of Pakistan’s army, has officially stayed mum about the number of personnel or the cost of protecting Chinese expatriates.
According to Nagao, in addition to the security division that Pakistan created to protect the CPEC, China has also taken its own initiatives to protect the route connecting Xinjiang with the entire length of Pakistan.
“That is why Chinese military and Chinese private military companies are deployed in Pakistan now,” Nagao said. “Of course, such a plan is a threat to India. Firstly, the China–Pakistan alliance itself is a threat to India.
Diplomacy at BRICS
Nagao said that BRICS is also an important international forum for India–China diplomacy and its developments vis-à-vis the border dispute.He said that if China continues to expand its influence in the Global South, its agenda for global hegemony will push it to contain India’s rise.
In this context, Nagao said he believes BRICS is an important opportunity for India to deal with Chinese diplomacy and to ensure India’s interests, including its border concerns.
“Because BRICS includes rising Global South countries, China is using BRICS to expand its influence in the Global South,” Nagao said. “China is also seeking new Global South members and making BRICS an anti-West group.”
He said India’s membership in BRICS ensures that it doesn’t turn into a completely anti-West group.
While addressing a session at the Hudson Institute last year, Jaishankar made what he called a “very important distinction” in saying that though India is “non-Western,” it is not “anti-Western.”
Nagao said this interplay is visible at BRICS, where India is opposed to including pro-China and anti-West countries in the forum.
“Thus, thanks to India, BRICS is a group of the Global South countries but not an anti-West grouping,” Nagao said. “This year, BRICS accepted four new countries.”
Nagao also pointed to Modi’s statement at the summit as a manifestation of such positioning.
“We must be careful to ensure that this organization does not acquire the image of one that is trying to replace global institutions,” Modi said.
