As India and China go to the 19th round of Senior Higher Military Commander Level (SHMCL) talks on Monday at the Chushul border post on the Indian side of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh, there are reasons for optimism and hopes for a breakthrough.
The past 18 rounds have yielded effective disengagement in five of the seven friction areas. The current round of talks is to resolve the two remaining friction areas in eastern Ladakh—Demchok and Depsang.
The first stand-off was resolved in Galwan in July 2020, Pangong Tso and Kailash ranges in February 2021, Gogra in August 2021 and PP 15 in September 2022.
The 18th round of talks had taken place on April 23 in Moldo, a PLA post on the Chinese side of the LAC.
In recent months, there has been a flurry of meetings between Indian and Chinese leaders and officials at various levels.
Just last month on July 24, India’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval met Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi on the sidelines of a BRICS meeting in Johannesburg.
Following the meeting, a Chinese foreign ministry press release pointed out that Indian PM Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping had reached an “important consensus” on stabilizing China-India relations when they met in Indonesia’s Bali in September 2022 for the G-20 summit.
Before the July 24 Bali meet, on July 10, Wang, who then headed the Central Commission on Foreign Affairs, had also met Indian foreign minister S Jaishankar on the sidelines of the East Asia summit in Jakarta, Indonesia.
The operative wording in recent joint statements and press releases issued by both sides “In line with the guidance provided by the State Leaders…” therefore has a definite bearing and implication for the trajectory of the talks.
Moreover, there is pressure on Beijing on the domestic front with signs of the giant economy faltering. The post-pandemic recovery has not been quite robust even as there has been shrinking trade, and foreign investment and the world’s second-largest economy is showing deflationary tendencies.
With military tension yet to abate with Taiwan, China may find it problematic to focus equally on two military fronts—India and Taiwan.
On the other hand, India goes to parliamentary elections in 2024 and there is pressure on New Delhi to resolve outstanding issues of which the border tangle with China at the top of the stack.
On top of that, PM Modi and President Xi are expected to meet during the BRICS Summit in Johannesburg on August 22-23. And after 16 days, the two leaders are again to meet for the G20 summit in New Delhi on September 9-10.
The economics of deploying and maintaining huge deployments in difficult terrain along the 3,488 km long border is also substantial.
A military establishment source had told THE WEEK on Thursday that after the Galwan incident of May 15, 2020, the Indian Air Force had flown in about 68,000 Indian troops, about 90 tanks, nearly 330 BMP infantry combat vehicles, radar systems, artillery guns and other equipment to be deployed in the difficult border.
Given the fact that the Indian military largely ‘mirrors’ the PLA’s moves in the current stand-off, it is likely that a similar number of Chinese troops are also deployed along the LAC, totalling over 1,30,000 on both sides. Such huge deployments involve expenditures that do not give any tangible returns and that can be crippling in times of economic distress.
