External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar remarked on Saturday, February 19, 2022, that India’s ties with China are currently in a “particularly difficult phase” as a result of Beijing’s violation of border agreements, emphasizing that the “state of the border would decide the status of the relationship.” Mr. Jaishankar, speaking at the Munich Security Conference (MSC) 2022 Panel Discussion in Munich, said India has an issue with China.
“And the problem is that there was peace for 45 years, there was stable border management, and there were no military casualties on the border from 1975,” he added in response to the host’s query. “That changed because we had agreements with China not to bring military forces to the… we call it the border, but it’s the Line of Actual Control,” Mr. Jaishankar explained. “The state of the border will naturally dictate the state of the relationship,” he remarked.
India-China relations were good before June 2020
“Clearly, relations with China are going through a very difficult phase right now,” the external affairs minister said, adding that India’s relations with the West were good even before June 2020. The Indian and Chinese forces clashed in eastern Ladakh after a severe conflict in the Pangong lake areas, and both sides gradually increased their deployment by bringing in tens of thousands of soldiers and heavy equipment.
Tensions rose after a violent encounter between both sides’ armed troops in the Galwan Valley on June 15, 2020. Mr. Jaishankar, who was in Melbourne last week, stated that the situation at the Line of Actual Control (LAC) arose as a result of China’s failure to abide by written agreements not to mass soldiers at the border and that Beijing’s actions have become a source of “legitimate concern” for the entire international community.
The charge against China is re-iterated.
According to him, the situation at the LAC has developed as a result of China’s disobedience of formal agreements with India not to mass forces at the border in 2020.
“I think it’s a subject of serious concern for the entire international community when a large country disregards written promises,” he said during a joint press conference with his Australian counterpart Marise Payne. Mr. Jaishankar took part in a panel discussion at the MSC on the Indo-Pacific, which was intended at debating the rising tensions between NATO members and Russia over Ukraine.
“I don’t think the situations in the Indo-Pacific and transatlantic are really analogous,” he said when asked about the Indo-Pacific situation. “Certainly, the assumption in your question that somehow there is a trade-off and one country does it in the Pacific in exchange for you doing something else, I don’t think that’s the way international relations work.”
“What is happening here and what is happening in the Indo-Pacific are two very different challenges.” Indeed, if there was a link based on that logic, a number of European powers would have already taken aggressive stances in the Indo-Pacific. That was something we didn’t notice. Mr. Jaishankar added, “We haven’t seen that since 2009,” referring to an aggressive China showing its muscles in the region.