China link foreign ministerlink was in Indialink on Friday, officials said, his firstvisit link since a deadly clashlink on the Asian giants’ disputed Himalayanborder link in 2020.
The high-altitude brawl in June 2020 left 20 Indian soldiers and at leastfour Chinese troops dead, and led to a sharp deterioration in relationswith both sides sending major reinforcements to the area.
Wang Yi, who arrived from Afghanistan in his first visitlink since the Taliban took power, was dueto meet Indian counterpart S. Jaishankar later on Friday in New Delhi.
According to Al Jazeera, the two sides are expected to talk about the borderlink as well as Russia’s invasion ofUkraine. Both consider Russia a friendly nation and have rejected Westerncalls to condemn the aggression from Moscow, which it calls a specialmilitary operation.
Thousands of Indian troops remain deployed along India’s remote borderlink Chinalink in Ladakh’s Galwan valley in theHimalayas, where hand-to-hand fighting broke out in 2020 – the first deadlyencounter between the nuclear-armed neighbours in decades.
Their unmarked 3,500km long frontier has remained largely peaceful since aborder link war in 1962, and both countriesstill claim vast swathes of each other’s territory.
After the Galwan clash link, senior officersfrom the two militaries have held more than a dozen rounds of talks tode-escalate the standoff in Ladakh, but progress has been limited.
Last February, after multiple military talks, Indian and Chinese troopscompleted a pullout from a lake area in Ladakh. Days later, Wang Yi andJaishankar agreed to set up a hotline.
Beijing has repeatedly said that the borderlink standoff does not represent theentirety of China-India relations, while New Delhi has maintained thatpeace along the frontier is essential for the two countries to worktogether.
New Delhi, however, has numerous other concerns regarding China’sactivities in almost all of India’s neighbours.
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Aside from the tensions in the Himalayas, India’s mistrust stems fromBeijing’s support of old foe Pakistan, the competition for influence inNepal, and concern over China’s economic clout in Bangladesh, Myanmar andSri Lanka.
China link is India’s largest tradingpartner, with bilateral trade expanding exponentially since the turn of thecentury to $95 billion in 2021-22.
Trade remains heavily tilted in Beijing’s favour. India’s trade deficitwith China link is the largest it has withany county, and the imbalance has been steadily widening.
More than 100 Chinese companies operate in Indialink, including state-owned enterprises andelectronics manufacturers that have come to dominate India’s mobile phonemarket.
Since 2020, however, New Delhi has tightened the screws on Chinese playersin Asia’s third-largest economy by increasing scrutiny of investments orimports and banning some mobile apps.
The Indian government had previously held up investments worth billionsfrom Beijing, but last week said that approvals for 66 proposals fromneighbouring countries – including China link –totalling $1.79bn had been approved.
Last month, India link also blocked accessto dozens of Chinese apps over security concerns, increasing the tally ofsuch restricted mobile apps to more than 300.