India returns lost Chinese soldier, de-escalating tensions

The Global Times learned from sources on Monday that India has returned the Chinese soldier who got lost along the China-India border on the morning of January 8 and was held by the Indian military.

PLA Daily reported that the Chinese soldier was returned to the Chinese border armed forces at noon on Monday.

China’s frontier forces confirmed on Saturday that due to darkness and complicated terrain, a Chinese soldier went missing on the China-India border early Friday morning, and had urged India to return him.

“The return of the lost Chinese frontier soldier is in accordance with the border regulation mechanism agreed by both countries. And India showed goodwill in de-escalating border tensions by returning the Chinese soldier within four days,” Qian Feng, director of the research department at the National Strategy Institute at Tsinghua University in Beijing, told the Global Times on Monday.

Before the border tensions, it usually took one or two days for India to return Chinese soldiers who accidentally got lost along the border, but this time it took longer, which is also understandable, as India had to carry out the necessary procedures to verify the soldier’s identity and go through official steps, Qian said.

The expert told the Global Times in a previous report that whether the Indian military would return the lost Chinese soldier promptly would be a touchstone of India’s willingness to act in accordance with the agreement reached by the two sides through previous military talks.

China informed India of the incident as soon as it occurred, and sought help from the latter. After a two hour search, the soldier was found, said the frontier force.

There were previously occasions when soldiers from both sides lost their way and crossed the China-India border.

On October 18, a PLA soldier went missing while helping a herdsman find his yak along the China-India border.

After China urged India to help in the search, India later notified China that a missing person from China had been found, and on October 21, India returned the Chinese soilder to after a medical exam.