In the past 20 days, the situation on the Sino-Indian border has heated up again since India unilaterally increased its troops by 10,000 troops in the western section of the Sino-Indian border, and disputes between the two sides over the southern Tibetan region in the eastern sector and the Ali region in the western sector have begun to increase day by day.
However, while the two sides were arguing, India suddenly changed its attitude and took the initiative to send officials to China, hoping to consolidate and control the border situation and avoid further escalation of the conflict.
The Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement saying that on the same day, Dai Guolan, joint secretary of the East Asia Department of the Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, left for China and held the 29th meeting of the China-India Border Affairs Consultation and Working Mechanism with Hong Liang, director of the Border and Maritime Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Indian Foreign Ministry.
At the meeting, the Indian representative took the lead in expressing his hope that he would reach an early agreement with China on a border plan acceptable to both countries, normalize the control of the border situation, improve the border consultation mechanism, and hold a new round of military commander-level talks.
With regard to the Indian side's remarks, the Chinese side, in the spirit of avoiding a recurrence of the border situation, put forward the demand that the Indian side should continue to take the initiative to consolidate the achievements of the disengagement between the Chinese and Indian armies in the early stage and jointly maintain peace and tranquility in the border areas.
It is worth mentioning that, according to the usual schedule of China-India border consultations, the first round of meetings between the two sides this year should be held in April. The meeting was brought forward to the end of March, most likely at the request of the Indian side to avoid the national elections in April.
The purpose of the Indian side in doing so is mainly to pave the way for the next Indian general election, because in the next three months, the Hindu populist Bharatiya Janata Party and Prime Minister Modi will inevitably pave the way for the election by hyping up the China-India issue. Therefore, maintaining communication with the Chinese side in advance will help prevent the two countries from making strategic miscalculations during the election period, which can be self-defeating.
However, although China and India have made some progress in managing border differences in recent consultations, this does not mean that the China-India border has been fundamentally resolved. Combined with the historical experience of border conflicts that broke out in 2020 just after the 2019 elections in India, it cannot be ruled out that Modi will continue to hype up the border issue after he is re-elected and consolidates his power.
At present, although after 21 rounds of Sino-Indian military commander-level talks, the two sides announced their retreat at Pangong Lake, the Peacock River Valley, hot spring outposts and other places, there are still confrontations in the Depsang Plains, Demchok and other places.