China's Xi meets India's Modi after signing border dispute agreement

Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit for leaders of developing nations shortly after their governments reached an agreement over a disputed area along their shared border.

Wednesday's summit in the Russian city of Kazan was the first structured and formal bilateral meeting since an informal summit in October 2019, months before border tensions blew up in 2020.

India and China have agreed to restore patrolling rights to each in the Depsang Plains and Demchok region in a bid to resolve a military standoff along the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh, the Indian Express newspaper reported.

China on Tuesday confirmed the deal had been struck, without giving much detail.

"China and India have been maintaining close communication on issues related to the China-India border through diplomatic and military channels," Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian told a news conference in Beijing on Oct. 22. "Now, the two sides have reached a solution to the relevant issues." 

"In the next step, China will work with India to implement the above solution," Lin said.

2020 tensions

Thousands of Indian and Chinese troops faced off in June 2020 at three or four locations in the western Himalayas after Beijing’s forces intruded into Indian territory, according to Indian security officials and local media.

China denied intruding into Indian territory near the Galwan River in the mountainous Ladakh region.

Indian and Chinese troops later disengaged from the southern and northern banks of Pangong Lake, in an operation begun on Feb. 10, 2021.

Xi and Modi met informally in Mahabalipuram in October 2019, months before the military standoff in Ladakh, and held brief talks on the sidelines of meetings in Bali in 2022 and Johannesburg in 2023. 

Neither China nor India has given details of how the stand-off will be resolved under the new deal.

An Indian military source told Reuters that the pact will allow both sides to patrol contested points on the frontier according to an agreed schedule to prevent confrontations.

Richard Rossow of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies said the recent agreement should help to reduce bilateral tensions, as long as China sticks to it.

"India knows that China has a history of breaking pacts with India, and the two countries have a range of other points of tension from trade to South Asia engagement," he told RFA Mandarin in a recent interview, adding that a bilateral trade imbalance in Beijing's favor was a key issue for Modi's government.

He said India should continue to defend its interests and penalize China for any future "aggressive behavior," as well as expanding ties with the U.S., Japan and Australia "to allow for collective responses if China should take destabilizing steps."

‘Salami-slicing’

Beijing has been looking to improve relations with Delhi for some time, but the border issue remained an obstacle to progress on other issues, said Aparne Pande, a research fellow at the Hudson Institute.

But she said there had been no reset in ties.

"The underlying frictions and tensions at the core of India-China relations have not changed," Pande told RFA Mandarin. "India views with concern China’s desire to strategically encircle India on the continental and maritime fronts."

The two countries also have differences when it comes to the issue of Tibet and the Dalai Lama, she said.

She said the People's Liberation Army, or PLA, has been "salami-slicing" parcels of Indian territory in Himalayan border regions since 2012.

"While the latest agreement may lead to disengagement and de-escalation on the border, how long that lasts will depend upon the Chinese side," she said. "Historically, China’s PLA has adopted a strategy of periodically testing Indian resolve and so the possibility that another PLA incursion will happen some weeks or some months from now cannot be precluded."

Facing hurdles

Meanwhile, China's vision of itself as a Global South leader has run into obstacles, according to the Hudson Institute's Nate Sibley.

"While China has sought to position itself as Global South leader through economic influence, its model has gone awry amid economic headwinds and by having burdened partners with unsustainable debt," Sibley said in comments emailed to RFA Mandarin. "By focusing on diplomacy, it is India that has arguably played the defter hand -- at least in the longer-term." 

Sibley said BRICS, which initially grouped Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, but has expanded to include emerging economies that China hopes will challenge the U.S.-led economic order, doesn't have much of a shared agenda beyond the desire to reduce their dependence on the U.S. dollar, known as de-dollarization.

"Until they figure out a viable alternative, it is hard to see what substantive purpose the grouping serves except to bolster the global image of China, Russia, and India as global leaders in a new era -- and for smaller hedging states to use their BRICs engagement as leverage in their dealings with the US and other Western partners," he said.

Stewart Patrick of the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said the BRICS summit is of huge symbolic value to Putin.

"Although there are some practical implications as well for Russia, the important symbolism in particular is for Vladimir Putin to be able to show that Russia is not isolated on the global stage," he told RFA Mandarin.

Putin needs to show the world that "despite Western efforts to try to sanction his country for its invasion of Ukraine, it still has friends in the world," he said.

Xi, on the other hand, wants to show that "the Western world is being replaced by the non-Western world and that China is at the core of that effort," Patrick said.

While it is a member of BRICS, India is also a member of the "Quad" grouping along with the United States, Australia and Japan, "which is actually geared towards containing China's influence and making sure that it doesn't behave in an aggressive fashion," he said.

Sibley said Putin would be "desperate" to portray Russia as a strong leading partner in an alternative global order.

"The mere fact of hosting the BRICS provides him with a considerable image boost," he said, adding that Xi would be keen to allay concerns about China’s profound economic challenges.

Xi-Putin talks

Xi met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Kazan on Tuesday, in talks that lasted for about an hour. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the two leaders spent much of it discussing the situation in Ukraine.

"All in all, a lot of time [during the discussion] was dedicated [to Ukraine]," Peskov told the Rossiya 1 television channel in an interview on Tuesday cited by Russia's Interfax news service.

"[Relations] with the 'collective West' were discussed. The thing is that they infringe on our and Chinese interests, [Putin and Xi] had something to share in this regard," Peskov said when asked whether Putin and Xi talked about relations with the United States.

They also "outlined the key parameters of further contacts for continuing the dialogue," in a meeting Peskov described as "very sincere, business-like, constructive, specific."

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Luisetta Mudie and Malcolm Foster.