Indian and Chinese troops are engaging better with the improvement in bilateral ties, Indian Army Chief General Upendra Dwivedi said on Monday.
The Chinese side informs the Indian side about their construction activities these days, General Dwivedi said, and that the scope of friction has reduced and tempers have cooled along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), the de facto border between the two countries.
Construction on the Indian side in response to construction on the Chinese side had reportedly triggered the violent hand-to-hand combat in the Galwan river valley in June 2020, when at least 24 Indian and Chinese soldiers were killed. That led to a freeze in diplomatic relations and the gathering of thousands of troops along the LAC.
"There's been a lot of change over the past one year -- a lot of improvement in relations," General Dwivedi said during a broadcasted chat with an Indian television presenter at the Manekshaw Centre.
It was a curtain-raiser event for this year's Chanakya Defence Dialogue, which will be held in the city jointly by the Indian Army and the Centre for Land Warfare Studies, a think-tank, over November 27-28. The cooperation is good at this time, General Dwivedi said referring to Chinese troops, and added that 1,100 ground-level interactions have taken place over the past one year, which translates to three interactions each day.
"But major decisions are still taken at high levels," he said, adding: "We look for solutions on the ground. Both sides are showing flexibility."
Since Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping met on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in October 2024, in Kazan, Russia, India and China have held multiple rounds of talks, resulting in a general thaw in relations, and the resumption of direct flights (although not between New Delhi and Beijing yet).
Modi visited China for the first time in seven years at the end of August to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh met his Chinese counterpart Admiral Dong Jun during the SCO defence ministers' meeting in June, and in November in Malaysia for an ASEAN defence ministers' meeting.
Disengagement has been achieved to an extent along the LAC. But 'de-escalation' remains unclear -- if heavy defence equipment have been removed and how far troops have moved back.
"After that when we talk about boundary delimitation and other things, this environment will be helpful," General Dwivedi said, adding that the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination (WMCC) on India-China border affairs "will let us know how we should proceed ahead".
-- Business Standard
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