China, India in engagement mode, including on Afghanistan
This has been a year of calm for Sino-Indian relations compared with last year, when a military standoff threatened to escalate into a conflict. Or, so it seemed.
State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi met Ajit Doval, India’s national security adviser, in Chengdu, Sichuan province, on Nov 24 for talks aimed at ultimately finding a solution to the border issue that has long been a thorn in the side of bilateral relations.
Before this, 20 rounds of meetings under the special representatives’ mechanism had been held, beginning in 2003.
“It is fair to say that the two sides in general share similar views and thinking in many areas,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said of the latest border talks at a media briefing on Nov 26.
While answering a related question, he said that in the present international climate, the strategic significance of ties between the two countries had become more prominent.
A full transcript of the briefing on the ministry’s website does not provide information on specific discussions on the topic. A statement released by India’s External Affairs Ministry after the meeting isn’t revelatory from that standpoint either. But overall, the impression that both governments appear to convey at this point is one of engagement.
The officials also discussed confidence-building measures to promote communication between the border personnel of the two countries, according to the Indian statement.
The border talks are expected to continue next year.
Meanwhile, China and India are close to completing a rare joint project involving a third country.
Some Afghan diplomats started training at China Foreign Affairs University in Beijing on Nov 19 as part of a program under which they previously received training at India’s Foreign Service Institute in New Delhi from Oct 15 to 26. The collaboration was discussed during a summit between President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in April.
Xi and Modi also met on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Argentina over the weekend, in their fourth meeting this year.
“What is important from our perspective is that it should be an area of cooperation in and on Afghanistan,” Sayed Mahdi Munadi, an official at the Afghan embassy in Beijing, told me in October about projects that can help his war-torn country.
He added that multitrack diplomacy has a greater chance of success when there’s practical cooperation.
While technically trilateral, the project’s bilateral aspect has gotten wider media attention owing to the perceived improvement in relations between the two Asian giants.
China and the United States have hosted joint training of Afghan diplomats in the past.
Afghanistan is possibly the first place where the “ChinaIndia plus one” partnership model is being implemented.
As China celebrates the 40th anniversary of the launch of its economic reforms, a host of activities have been organized, including a large-scale exhibition at the National Museum near Tian’anmen Square, chronicling the milestones of a nation that went from abject poverty to the world’s secondlargest economy.
In a reform-related China Daily video, the Indian actor Aamir Khan, considered a major soft-power import, attributes his popularity in China to Chinese discovering him “on their own”.