NEW DELHI – Emphasising on the need to find a “mutually acceptablesolution” on the boundary issue through a meeting of the specialrepresentatives, Chinese envoy to India Luo Zhaohui said on Monday thatbilateral ties between India and China can’t take the strain of anotherDoklam episode.
Delivering a keynote address on ‘Beyond Wuhan – How far and fast canChina-India relations go’ at an event organised by the Chinese embassy, healso said that “some Indian friends” had suggested a trilateral summitcomprising India, China and Pakistan, which was a “very constructive” idea.Leaders of China, Russia and Mongolia hold a similar meet, Zhaohui noted.”This is a proposal suggested by some Indian friends and it is a very agood and constructive idea. Maybe not now, but in the future, that is agreat idea,” he said.
Dwelling on Sino-Indian ties, Zhaohui said it is quite natural to havedifferences but they need to be controlled and managed throughcooperation. “We need to control, manage, narrow differences throughexpanding cooperation. The boundary question was left over by history. Weneed to find a mutually acceptable solution through SpecialRepresentatives’ Meeting while adopting confidence-building measures,” hesaid. “We cannot stand another Doklam (sic),” the envoy added.
Indian and Chinese troops were involved in a 73-day stand-off at the Doklamtri-junction of India, Bhutan and China between June to August 2017. Oneof the immediate fallouts of the Doklam stand-off was the suspension of theKailash Mansarovar Yatra from Nathu-La side and the annual militaryexercise between the two countries. China also did not give thehydrological data of the Brahmaputra and the Indus river that originates inChinese Tibet. Zhaohui said on Monday that China will continue to promotereligious exchanges and make arrangements for Indian pilgrims going toKailash Mansarovar in Tibet.
Post-Doklam, there have been frequent high-level engagements between theleaders of the two countries. In 2018 alone, Prime Minister Narendra Modiand Chinese President Xi Jinping have met twice in the last two months inWuhan and Qingdao.
Zhaohui noted that security cooperation is one of the three pillars of theShanghai Cooperation Organisation, an eight-member grouping also comprisingIndia, China and Pakistan. The SCO was founded at a summit in Shanghai in2001 by the Presidents of Russia, China, Kyrgyz Republic, Kazakhstan,Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. India and Pakistan became its members in 2017.