- Tuesday, March 04, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
Chinese foreign minister Qin Gang told his Indian counterpart Subrahmanyam Jaishankar on the sidelines of the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in New Delhi on Thursday (2) that the two countries should put their boundary issue in the “proper place” in bilateral relations and work together to being the situation at the borders “under normalised management” as soon as possible.
It was Qin’s first in-person meeting with the Indian diplomat and it happened amid the long border row between the two nuclear-armed neighbours in eastern Ladakh which has continued for almost three years. Qin took over as the foreign minister in December last year, succeeding Wang Yi.
India has been maintaining for long that its ties with China cannot be normal unless there is peace in the border areas. Jaishankar conveyed to Qin that the state of India-China relations is “abnormal” as their talks focused on addressing the challenges in bilateral ties, especially that of peace and tranquillity in the border areas.
“We also had a brief discussion on what was happening in the G20 framework. But the thrust of the meeting was really on our bilateral relationship and the challenges in the bilateral relationship, especially that of peace and tranquillity in the border areas,” he said.
Qin told Jaishankar that both sides should implement the important consensus of the leaders of the two countries, maintain dialogue and properly resolve disputes, and promote the improvement of bilateral ties and the steady moving forward of the relations, China’s state-run Xinhua news agency quoted an official press release from the Chinese foreign ministry as saying.
“The boundary issue should be put in the proper place in bilateral relations,” Qin said, adding that the situation on the borders should be brought under normalised management as soon as possible.
China is willing to speed up the resumption of exchanges and cooperation with India in various fields, resume direct flights at the earliest date and facilitate people-to-people exchanges, he added.
He also said that as neighbouring countries and major emerging economies, China and India have far more common interests than differences. The development and revitalisation of China and India display the strength of developing countries, which will change the future of one-third of the world’s population, the future of Asia and even the whole world, Qin noted.
He said “the two sides should view their bilateral relations in the context of the once-in-a-century changes in the world, understand bilateral cooperation from the perspective of their respective national rejuvenation, and be partners on the path to modernisation”.
He said China and India have shared interests in many areas including safeguarding the rights and interests of developing countries, promoting South-South cooperation and addressing global challenges such as climate change. China supports the Indian side in fulfilling its chairmanship of the G20 and is ready to strengthen communication and cooperation to safeguard the common interests of developing countries and international equity and justice, so as to inject stability and positive energy into the world, Qin said.
India assumed the presidency of the G20 on December 1 last year. The talk between the foreign ministers came nearly eight months after Jaishankar held a meeting with the then-Chinese foreign minister Wang in Bali on the sidelines of a G20 meeting in Bali, Indonesia.
(With PTI inputs)
