China says it reached ‘resolution’ with India on contested border issues

(FILES) Indian army soldiers walk along a road near Zojila mountain pass that connects Srinagar to the union territory of Ladakh, bordering China on February 28, 2021.  India said on October 21, 2024 it had struck an agreement with neighbour China for military patrols in highly contested border zones, stalled since their rival armies clashed in 2020. (AFP)

BEIJING – China said Tuesday it had reached a “resolution” with India over issues related to their disputed border, after New Delhi said it had struck a deal with Beijing for military patrols along the frontier.

China and India, the world’s two most populous nations, are intense rivals and have regularly accused each other of trying to seize territory along their unofficial divide, known as the Line of Actual Control.

After a border skirmish in 2020, which killed at least 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers, both sides pulled back tens of thousands of troops and agreed not to send patrols into a narrow strip surrounding the Line of Actual Control.

Beijing’s foreign ministry said Tuesday it had given its “positive approval” to a border deal, confirming a similar statement by New Delhi on Monday.

“Recently, China and India have maintained close communication through diplomatic and military channels on issues relating to the China-India border,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian told a regular news briefing.

“Currently, the two sides have reached a resolution on the relevant issues. China gives its positive approval to this,” Lin said.

“In the next stage, we will properly implement that resolution with the Indian side,” he said.

On Monday, India’s top foreign ministry bureaucrat Vikram Misri said that “agreement has been arrived at on patrolling arrangements along the Line of Actual Control”.

The deal would lead to “disengagement and eventually a resolution of the issues that had arisen in these areas in 2020,” Misri said.

India’s external affairs minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said disengagement with China was “complete” and that details would come out in “due course”.

The understanding “creates a basis for peace and tranquillity along the border, which were there before 2020,” he said at a conference hosted by Indian broadcaster NDTV.

Disputes over the 3,500-kilometre (2,200-mile) frontier are a perennial source of tension between China and India, major economies vying for strategic influence across South Asia.

China claims all of India’s northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, considering it part of Tibet, and the two countries fought a border war in 1962.

BRICS talks?

The announcements came as Chinese and Indian leaders prepared to gather in Russia for the opening of a summit of the BRICS emerging economies.

Chinese state media reported on Tuesday that President Xi Jinping was on his way to the meeting, the biggest of its kind in Russia since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Around two dozen world leaders are expected to join the summit in the city of Kazan, including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The border resolution has fed speculation that Xi and Modi may hold official talks there.

Lin, the spokesman for Beijing’s foreign ministry, declined to confirm the mooted discussions at Tuesday’s press conference, saying that China would issue information “in due course”.