When Chinese Foreign Minister Huang Hua met Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on June 29, 1981, the two agreed that unless the boundary issue is resolved, it will be difficult to maintain friendship and goodwill between the two neighbors. .
More than 39 years later, the People’s Liberation Army and the Chinese Foreign Ministry seem to be on different pages. The PLA is working hard in its resolute effort to reach the Green Line defined by a 1959 map by then-Chinese Prime Minister Chou En-Lai, while the Foreign Ministry is talking about building bilateral economic ties, which in turn Over the years, they did it heavily. lean towards Beijing.
As much as State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi tried to overlook a quasi-warlike situation in Ladakh during his two-hour meeting with his Indian counterpart S Jaishankar, the fact remains that the 1981 parallel track policy of work to build harmonious ties, even as the two countries solve the border problem, they have not paid dividends to India.
Instead, India has since lost territory, allowing 65 patrol points defined by the China Study Group in 1976 to become the de facto Line of Control (LAC) in Ladakh. The patrol points are well within the Indian perception of LAC, but the movement of Indian forces towards these points has been restricted by the presence of Chinese troops, clashes with PLA patrols and, at times, severe weather and the mountainous terrain.
When Wang and Jaishanar reached a five-point consensus in Moscow to first disconnect and then reduce the escalation in Ladakh, the Communist Party of China spokesman Global Times continued to extol its warmongering editorial.
Also read: The withdrawal of Indian and Chinese troops in Ladakh is the first step before de-escalation
“If India wants peace, China and India should defend the LAC of November 7, 1959. If India wants war, China will please it,” says the tabloid, considered an extended arm of the Chinese government. He claims that India does not want to implement the 1959 LAC as it holds a grudge for its failure in the 1962 war.
It is this mentality from 1962 that permeates the Xi Jinping regime. President Xi, who evidently sees himself as a true successor to Mao Zedong, decided to target India in 1962, giving the impression that India intended to occupy Tibet.
The aggressive line projected by the party spokesman is totally at odds with the position of State Councilor Wang Yi in his meeting with Jaishankar, where the Chinese side did not seem to recognize the role the PLA had played in increasing tensions. As one diplomat said, it was as if the accumulation and friction in Ladakh was an act of God.
Given the Chinese expansionist plans to make unilateral cartographic changes in Ladakh, the withdrawal process will not be easy as the PLA wants to reach the 1959 Green Line and push the Indian army troops beyond the self-proclaimed line. This is a total violation of the 1993 Peace and Tranquility Agreement, which speaks of mutual and equal security at the border for both sides.
Under the circumstances, India will have to wait for the PLA Commander-in-Chief and President Xi Jinping to instruct their Western theater command troops to return to barracks if Beijing is seriously interested in rolling back the aggression. While the Chinese political mindset has not changed since 1962, the Indian mindset changed in 2014. Beijing must take this into account before taking the next step.
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