China’s foreign minister Wang Yi has arrived in Delhi, marking the first visit by a senior Chinese official to India in more than two years since the standoff in Ladakh began.
Sources say that Wang Yi will meet with Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar and Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval on Friday.
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It’s a goal of Wang Yi’s trip to India to restart physical contact and invite Prime Minister Narendra Modi to a BRICS meeting held in Beijing later this year.
There was still a lot of uncertainty about the visit until the very last minute. Even when the Chinese minister arrived in Delhi, there was no official confirmation that he had been there. Only by tracking the flight path of his plane, which took off from Afghanistan.
Several Chinese soldiers were killed in the Galwan Valley fight between Indian and Chinese soldiers. This led to a rift between India and China.
De-escalation has happened after many talks at the military level. Last year, the two sides finished disarming on Pangong Lake’s north and south banks and in the Gogra area. But there hasn’t been a return to the way things were before 2020.
On March 11, India and China met for the 15th time to work out their differences in the military.
Mr. Jaishankar met with Wang Yi several times in Moscow and Dushanbe to calm things down.
In September 2020, they held long talks in Moscow on the sidelines of a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. During these talks, they reached a five-point deal to solve the border dispute in eastern Ladakh.
Last year, they also met on the sidelines of another SCO meeting in Tajik’s capital city, Dushanbe. Another meeting was held in Dushanbe in September.
The Chinese visit comes in the middle of a new controversy over what he said about Kashmir at a TV show in Pakistan. In New Delhi, they called the comments “uncalled for.” They also said that Jammu and Kashmir are a matter of India, and both Pakistan and China know that.
