When Chinese foreign minister Huang Hua met Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on June 29, 1981, the two agreed that unless the boundary question is settled, it would be difficult to maintain friendship and goodwill between the two neighbours.
More than 39 years later, the People’s Liberation Army and the Chinese foreign ministry appear to be on different pages. The PLA is hard at work in its single-minded effort to reach to the Green Line defined by a 1959 map by then Chinese Premier Chou En-Lai while the foreign ministry is talking about building bilateral economic ties, which over the years, did strongly tilt towards Beijing.
Much as State Councillor and foreign minister Wang Yi tried to gloss over a near war-like situation in Ladakh during his two-hour-long meeting with his Indian counterpart S Jaishankar, the fact is that the 1981 parallel track policy of working to build on harmonious ties even as the two countries sort out the boundary issue has not paid any dividends to India.Read more…
