As India and China jointly launched a training program for 10 Afghan diplomats at the Foreign Services Institute in New Delhi on Monday, there were reports that the People’s Liberation Army had once again transgressed across the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh.
The training program was decided upon during the informal summit between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Wuhan in April. That summit came almost a year after Indian and Chinese troops faced off for 72 days at Doklam, on the China-Bhutan-India border tri-junction. During the summit, the two leaders agreed to step up cooperation and trust and take steps to prevent another Doklam-like incident, while leaving messier issues like the border dispute on the backburner.
The border issue between the two nations stretches from the Chinese takeover of Tibet in the 1950s, and its subsequent rejection of the MacMahon line drawn by the British as a border between India and the then Tibet.
Today, China occupies 38,000 sq km of Indian territory in the Aksai Chin region of Jammu and Kashmir, apart from 5,180 sq km of Indian territory in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir ceded to China in 1963. It also stakes claim to the entire state of Arunachal Pradesh, claiming it was once a part of Greater Tibet. Since then, hundreds of rounds of border discussions revolved around managing the dispute rather than challenging it, simply because while India has clearly spelt out its position, Beijing refuses to do so. And until that is done, negotiations cannot start.
A report tabled last month in the Lok Sabha analysed events after Doklam. Recommending that India continue stepping up military infrastructure along the border, it said: “It is difficult for the Committee to escape the perception that China sees it as being in its interests to keep the (border) dispute alive indefinitely for the purpose of throwing India off-balance whenever it so desires.” Till that changes, this remains the world’s largest real estate dispute.