Indian Army armored vehicles at a military base in Eastern Ladakh, May 19, 2024.
Tauseef Mustafa | AFP | Getty Images
India and China have agreed to intensify efforts to resolve their long-standing border dispute, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Indian Foreign Minister Jaishankar met on Thursday on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Astana, Kazakhstan.
“The two ministers agreed that prolonging the status quo in the border areas is not in the interests of either side,” the statement said.
The Asian powers have been at odds over border issues for decades.
“[Jaishankar] He stressed the need to redouble efforts to achieve complete disengagement from the remaining areas of Eastern Ladakh and restore peace and tranquility on the border in order to remove obstacles towards normalisation of bilateral relations.”
India and China share a 3,500-kilometer Himalayan border. To the west, China controls 38,000 square kilometers of territory that India also claims, while to the east, India holds 90,000 square kilometers of territory that Beijing claims as Chinese.
According to a statement from China’s Foreign Ministry, Wang said the two countries should “properly handle their differences” and work together to build a stable relationship and “oppose unilateral threats and resist confrontation between camps.”
Earlier this year, the US had intervened in the India-China border dispute, triggering a harsh response from Beijing.
“India-China relations are best maintained by adhering to the three mutualities of mutual respect, mutual consideration and mutual benefit,” a statement from India’s Ministry of External Affairs said.
In June 2020, 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers were killed in a clash in the Western Himalayas. Although no gunfight occurred, it was the largest casualty in fighting between the two countries since 1967.
Tensions between the two countries flared again in March this year after China claimed the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh was part of southern Tibet, calling the territory “Zangnan.”
India denies these allegations and maintains that Arunachal Pradesh has always been part of the South Asian country.
“These claims were absurd to begin with and remain absurd because Arunachal Pradesh is part of India and not because any other country claims it as part of India,” Jaishankar said in response to a question from CNBC during a visit to Singapore in March.
—CNBC’s Vinay Dwivedi contributed to this story.
