The ties between India and China though are looking very positive with likely visits of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping to each other’s country even as the relationship remains complex due to the unresolved boundary dispute. China is hosting G20 summit at Hangzhou and India will host the BRICS leaders’ meeting. The expected high-level trips come in the backdrop of highly successful visits of Xi to India in 2014 and Modi to Beijing last year, reflecting the buoyant state of ties which have seen all round development of cooperation in the last few years including in security and defence areas besides trade and investment. Last year was also marked by high levels visits. Besides Modi, Home Minister Rajnath Singh and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj visited China while Finance Minister Arun Jaitley visited Hong Kong. This year’s interactions will begin with the visit of National Security Advisor Ajit Doval who is expected to be in Beijing on a two-day visit starting on 5th January (since postponed). He is due to meet his counterpart and China’s top diplomat Yang Jiechi and Premier Li Keqiang. Doval’s visit is part of the “architecture for strategic communication” set up by both countries. So far the two sides have held 18 rounds of border talks. Despite the all round progress, it still remains an uneasy relationship due to the unresolved boundary issue. The two sides witnessed a major standoff ahead of Premier Li’s first visit to India in 2013 soon after he took over office followed by another one during Xi’s visit last year raising tensions at the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the Ladakh region. High level visits of military personnel took place, including the India trip of Fan Changlong, Vice Chairman of the China’s highest military body Central Military Commission, and the Beijing visit of Northern Army Commander of the Indian Army Lt Gen D. S Hooda. The two sides succeeded in setting up a mechanism for interactions at various border points along the 3,488 km-long LAC besides at the highest level to address issues like the incursions, which are working well.
