Today, India and China commemorate the 75th anniversary of diplomatic relations with a toast and cake-cutting ceremony in New Delhi. Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri and the Chinese Ambassador to India were in attendance in New Delhi. However, the genuine sharing of the territorial cake remains unresolved, necessitating a seamless transition from the colonial borders established during the British colonial period in this region.
The Himalayas extend along the Chinese-Indian border before descending into the Karakorum Range, which borders Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. This is nature's equivalent of the Great Wall of China, or, from the perspective of New Delhi, the Great Wall of India. It isolates the two most populous nations on Earth from one another both militarily and economically. It is well-known that a boundary dispute exists between China and India along the Himalayan barrier. The China-India border dispute is one of the most longstanding in the Himalayan region, originating in the 1950s when China annexed Tibet, historically regarded as a geographical and cultural buffer between India and China.
The relationship between China and India remains sluggish due to persistent unresolved difficulties. The major disputes pertain to Aksai Chin and Arunachal Pradesh. India asserts that China is encroaching upon Aksai Chin, whilst China contends that the Indian territory of Arunachal Pradesh is its. China claims Arunachal Pradesh as "Southern Tibet," asserting that the contention involves 90,000 square kilometres of land. The Aksai Chin Plateau encompasses an area of 35,200 square kilometres. Another contentious area is located near Demchok to the south, encompassing around 500 square km of terrain. The Chinese asserted that the lower reaches of the Galwan Valley have consistently been part of their jurisdiction within the broader Aksai Chin area. The overall contested area constitutes approximately 4 per percent of India's territory and less than 2 percent of China's extensive landmass.
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The large number of discourses on the 1962 war between China and India can be found not as a neutral perspective but as a rigid form of "blame game" among scholars. The issues of war and Tibet policy divide even Indian scholars. In the book JFK's Forgotten Crisis: Tibet, the CIA, and the Sino-Indian War, Bruce Riedel explains the reasons for this division: As tension with China mounted after the Dalai Lama fled into exile in India in 1959, Nehru and his advisers gradually implemented what became known as the "Forward Policy" of sending Indian military forces forward into contested and disputed territory with China. Riedel further says that India's implementation of the forward policy served as a major provocation to China in September 1962. Similarly, tensions with China flared as Tibet's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, fled to India, where he was granted asylum in 1959. Subsequently, border disputes culminated in the two-front war of 1962, in which China cemented its de facto control over the strategic Aksai Chin territory linking Tibet with Xinjiang. There are different opinions about how to understand the 1962 war. Professor Emeritus S.D. Muni, from the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), India, points out that the territorial war that was inflicted on India in 1962 damaged India's credibility as a defender of the Himalayas. However, S. Jaishankar, the incumbent Minister of External Affairs of India, says in his book The India Way: Strategies for an Uncertain World that the loser in the 1962 conflict was not just India but the relationship itself. It is a defeat that continues to be a scar on the Indian psyche. It altered India's strategic perceptions, highlighting the potential need for India to engage in a two-front war against Pakistan in the west and China in the north. This remains India's main security concern. After the Chinese attack in 1962, India turned to the US for support, even requesting air cover. Whatever the reason, the border war brought China-India relations to their lowest point.
In the history of bilateral relations between China and India, the visit of Premier Zhou Enlai to India in 1955 is considered the heyday of relationships. "Hindi-Chini bhai-bhai (Indians and Chinese are brothers) was coined by Nehruvian India to welcome Zhou Enlai but the humiliation of the 1962 border war, after which the slogan was turned into "Hindi-Chini bye-bye" for decades. The restoration of ambassadorial relations in 1976 took fourteen years after the 1962 war. It took twelve more for the Prime Minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi, to travel to China in 1988. The focus was on normalizing ties and stabilizing the border— objectives largely achieved over the next decade. The peace and tranquility agreements were signed in 1993 and 1996. As Deng Xiaoping famously told Rajiv Gandhi in December 1988, the twenty-first century would not be the Asian century if India and China did not develop together. This historic visit to China sees a remarkable improvement in bilateral relations, therefore making it more pleasant than at any time since the mid-1950s.
In 2017, the one single incident that marred India-China relations significantly was the standoff between their two armies at Doklam in Bhutan. The standoff between their two armies at Doklam in Bhutan lasted for 72 days before an agreed-upon mutually acceptable process of disengagement and de-escalation took place in August 2017. Coming on the heels of the face-offs of 2013 and 2014, the Doklam incident did inject a lot of strain and competition into bilateral ties. In June 2017, when the leaders of the two countries met at Astana, they reached consensus that at a time of global uncertainty, India-China relations are a factor of stability. In their relationship, India and China must not allow differences to become disputes. This insight reveals that despite all their divergences, there is a strategic maturity at work between them. That realization led to the Wuhan and Chennai summits in 2018 and 2019, respectively.
At the Wuhan summit, Chinese president Xi Jinping said, "The friendship between the two countries should continue to grow like the Yangtze and Ganges flowing forward forever." However, this did not change the tense situation at the border. In June 2020, gunfire echoed in the Galwan Valley, resulting in human casualties. The Doklam Standoff 2017 and Galwan 2020 show the unpredictable future and uncertain nature of India-China relations. Neglecting their deteriorating relations could potentially undo the hard-earned successes of previous governments. After the Galwan Valley clashes, New Delhi moved to block a long list of Chinese apps, including the popular Chinese video-sharing platform TikTok; cut Chinese companies' participation in public procurement bids; and restricted Huawei's role in its future 5G networks. Despite some improvement recently, China's relations with India are still marked by a lack of trust. From an economic perspective, conflicts between neighbours are generally devastating for both.
Earlier, Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao (2005) and President Hu Jintao (2006) visited India. "Both the countries believed that their relations had entered a new stage and agreed to establish a China-India strategic and cooperative partnership for peace and prosperity," a joint statement by Wen and Manmohan Singh said. Both countries had given considerable emphasis to finding a solution to the border issue, but the issue bristled with complications and complexities despite exchanges of high-level visits between the two countries.
There exists the possibility of bringing China and India together for the larger cause given the changing geopolitical dynamics. However, observers have seen a solution to the border dispute from a distance. Therefore, both countries need to address or at least postpone their territorial disputes, move forward, and engage deeply in their respective economic and infrastructure development while maintaining environmental protection. They can also work on pressing issues, such as climate change, artificial intelligence, and so on. Indeed, both countries should prioritize their dynamic relationship for the benefit of more than a third of the world's population combined.
