NEW DELHI—India and China agreed on a six-point consensus to guide bilateral relations on Dec. 18, 2024, as India’s national security adviser and China’s foreign minister met for the first time in five years.
The talks in Beijing between India’s Ajit Doval and China’s Wang Yi were aimed at solving the two countries’ long-running border dispute.
Experts say the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) appears to have softened its stance toward India because of various geopolitical factors, they say, including President-elect Donald Trump’s second term, which is expected to intensify U.S.–China competition.
Beijing’s altered behavior may be an attempt “to recalibrate in a Trump world,” said Harsh Pant, vice president of studies and foreign policy at the New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation.
“[It also] reflects the sense that things have terribly gone wrong with India and something needs to be done about it—to perhaps re-engage India in a way that allows the possibility of China being seen as a neighbor that can be trusted,” he told The Epoch Times.
Pant said he believes that the meeting between Doval and Yi will not result in any dramatic changes in India’s posture, and he said he does not expect the development to completely rebuild India’s trust.
The relationship between India and China suffered gravely because of the bloody Galwan conflict of 2020, in which 20 Indian soldiers and an undisclosed number of PLA soldiers lost their lives, after the Chinese regime violated an agreement to withdraw its troops from a contested border area.
The incident created unprecedented military build-up and new flash-points on the disputed border in eastern Ladakh. It also abruptly halted several institutional mechanisms that had been established to ensure normalcy and tranquility on the lengthy, treacherous border between the two countries.
Things appeared to be changing recently when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi officially met with CCP leader Xi Jinping for the first time since the Galwan conflict. The two met in Russia on Oct. 23 on the sidelines of the BRICS summit.
The 10-nation BRICS group—originally made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—held its 16th annual summit in Kazan.
Following the October meetings, the Chinese foreign ministry said that China and India had agreed to strengthen the special representative system between the two countries, established in 2003 during then-Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s visit to China.
The previous special representatives’ meeting, in 2019 in New Delhi, also involved Doval and Yi.
The Indian national security adviser and the top Chinese diplomat, who were also present in Kazan as part of their respective delegations, thus met as special representatives of their states for the first time in five years.
Strengthening the special representative mechanism was one of six points agreed upon by the two sides, according to the Chinese foreign ministry. The nations agreed to schedule the next round of meetings for 2025 in New Delhi.
The Impact of Trump 2.0
Experts told The Epoch Times that the Chinese regime decided to patch things up with India because it wants to focus fully on Trump’s second tenure.Although Trump has extended an invitation to Xi to attend his second presidential inauguration, the president-elect has repeatedly threatened to levy substantially higher additional tariffs on China.
Increasing geopolitical competition between the United States and China also implies Trump’s greater focus on China. This is already reflected in developments between India and China, they said.
“China is afraid of Trump because his policy between 2016 and 2020 was very strong against it,” Satoru Nagao, a nonresident fellow at the Washington-based Hudson Institute, told The Epoch Times.
Nagao said that the United States’ China policy remained consistent through the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations and most likely will not change in the long term. However, the means employed by each administration have varied. While Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden favored multinational frameworks, Trump prefers bilateral negotiations, he said.
He noted that in 2016, Trump invited Xi for a meeting, and while the two leaders were eating dessert at the president’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, he told the Chinese leader that he had ordered missile strikes on Syria.
“This is effective intimidation, because this situation is unpredictable, and this is also a message to Xi that you could be [the] next target if [you] resist Trump,” Nagao said.
Many such actions are fresh in Xi’s memory, Nagao said, as the communist leader prepares to confront Trump again.
U.S.–China competition looks to be the main topic under the new administration, Nagao said, pointing to Trump’s pick for secretary of state, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.)—known for his outspoken attitude toward China.
Nagao also noted China’s plan to invade Taiwan in 2027, during Trump’s second administration.
In an interview following the Rio de Janeiro meeting, Nagao told The Epoch Times that the India–China border agreement was 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 CCP because it wants to instead focus on the Indo-Pacific, he said.
Politics and Caution
According to analysts, although some progress is expected in bilateral ties between New Delhi and Beijing, nothing substantial is expected when it comes to border resolution, and India should remain cautious of Chinese maneuvers. The developments are time-specific and affected by various other geopolitical factors, they say.Beijing understands that its attitude toward India affecting its ambitions, according to Anil Trigunayat, a former Indian diplomat and a distinguished fellow at the New Delhi-based Vivekananda International Foundation.
“[That attitude] is also limiting their outreach and initiatives in organizations like BRICS and [the Shanghai Cooperative Organization] let alone other geographies,” Trigunayat said.
Pant, a professor of international relations with the India Institute at King’s College in London, cautioned that the fundamentals of the Indo–China relationship are challenging because the two countries remain so competitive.
The resumption of meetings under the special representative mechanism is a big change, Pant said, as the Chinese regime has traditionally used the border problem as leverage against India.
In some ways, it underscores “how China has been able to weaponize even basic negotiations on the boundary,” he said. On the other hand, “I don’t think we should make a big deal of it, because in that sense, this is just a restoration to status quo ante.”
Trigunayat said that although Trump has threatened increased tariffs against India also, the two countries share a global comprehensive strategic partnership, with bipartisan support.
“No doubt it will pose some challenges, but [the] Trump–Modi partnership and personal rapport will be able to weather those headwinds,” he said.
India’s “increasing global acceptability,” signaled by that partnership, has caused China to soften its posture toward India, according to Trigunayat.
