BEIJING, August 25. /TASS/. China’s authorities view border disputes with India as just one aspect of bilateral relations and are interested in strengthening strategic trust with New Delhi, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin said on Friday.
"The border problem is a vestige of the past and Chinese-Indian relations are not reduced to this," he said, commenting on the meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the BRICS summit in Johannesburg. "We hope that we can strengthen mutual strategic confidence through joint efforts to concentrate on consensus and cooperation."
According to the Chinese diplomat, Beijing’s position on the Chinese-Indian border problem "is unequivocal and unchanged." "We need to lay out a fair and rational settlement roadmap that is acceptable to both sides by means of peaceful friendly talks," he stressed.
China and India, in his words, must pool efforts to maintain stability along the shared border, as well as "promote the healthy and sustainable development of bilateral relations."
In May 2020, clashes erupted in the mountainous Ladakh region on the border between the two countries, resulting in casualties on both sides. India and China pulled heavy artillery, tanks and aircraft to the area. After several rounds of talks, Beijing and New Delhi began to withdraw their forces from the border.
The absence of a demarcated border between India and China in the Himalayas (the two countries are separated by the Line of Actual Control, or LAC) has been a source of tension for decades. In 1959, India claimed that the Chinese side had seized part of the Arunachal Pradesh state. An armed conflict between the two countries broke out in 1962 and China took control of around 38,000 square kilometers of India’s soil in Ladakh and Aksai Chin.