It could be the roseate dawn of a new era if agreeing to disengage leads to a period of peaceful coexistence of India and China. It appears the ice in ties between the Asian giants could be melting if the dramatic announcement by the external affairs ministry that patrolling will resume shortly in eastern Ladakh on the Line of Actual Control is taken as the first sign of a definitive breakthrough to end a four-and-a-half-year stalemate.
Mutual suspicions have been so alarmingly high since the Galwan scuffle in which soldiers were lost on both sides that the military strengths on the two sides of the LAC at the friction points had built up to an in-your-face standoff. If the patrolling resumes soon and opens avenues for total disengagement and resolution of issues that arose in 2020, a whole new perspective could emerge for the adversarial neighbours in several other areas.
If India’s patient playing of China with the focused approach that there could be no normal trade, cultural and people-to-people ties without first resolving the border issue indeed pays off at this juncture when a part of the world appears willing to meld more in a meeting of BRICS in Russia, nothing could be more welcome from India’s point of view.
India’s security overload in the last four years has been such a burden that all bilateral exchanges have been only about the disengagement in Ladakh. Long before that can physically take place along with the resumption of patrolling, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be meeting China’s supremo Xi Jinping in Kazan, Russia, and the vibes of the exchanges will be a pointer to the future that may lie ahead as imagined in this positive scenario emanating from agreeing to disengage.
If the issues over Depsang and Demchok, which have been pending from among the six friction points post-Galwan skirmishes, are sorted out smoothly as promised, there could be ground for the birth of a little trust in a relationship that has been fraught with mutual suspicions for decades since 1962, and especially so in the time since China has become a leading world economic and military power in the new millennium.
It is not as if India will be letting down its guard at this point and it will, perhaps, not even think of doing so until other matters of mistrust, including the security angle that remains stark even in trade and from Chinese investments in companies that operate in India, are unlikely to be mitigated for some time to come.
A great deal of benefit can flow from an even more normalised economic relationship to both countries, more so for China at a time when its economy and its property market have been tanking, requiring several stimuli and a rate cut. But, here again, the cart is getting before the horse as the whole scenario of peace and more wholesome trade, in which China has already a huge surplus from India despite the tensions, is subject to the disappearance of friction from the LAC. After all, this impetus for normalisation has come after several diplomatic and military commander meetings.
