After border brawls, India-China scale-up talks to 'rare' Lt Gen-level at Chulshul

With India-China standoff at the Line of Actual Control (LAC) escalating tensions between the two countries, Senior Journalist Sanjib Kr Baruah reports on a 'rare' Lieutenant General-level engagement between Beijing and Delhi. Baruah quotes a senior army official who says that talks at this level have never taken place before to address sudden India-China border conflagration.

New Delhi: Unprecedented times call for unprecedented measures. In a bid to resolve the vexed face-off near the Line of Actual Control (LAC), the Indian and Chinese military are taking recourse to a scaled-up ‘rare’ level of engagement.

On Saturday, the delegations of the world's two largest armies, that would meet across the table in Chushul near the Spanggur Gap in eastern Ladakh, would be led by Lieutenant General ranked officers.

“Talks at the level of lieutenant-general to address a sudden India-China border conflagration has never happened before,” a serving senior army official told ETV Bharat.

The talks will focus on thrashing out a way to resolve the ongoing India-China confrontation in eastern Ladakh which has the tremendous potential to escalate any moment.

Besides being engaged in an eye-ball to eye-ball situation in at least four points in eastern Ladakh, the armies have amassed thousands of soldiers, heavy vehicles and artillery in rear positions not far from the frontline.

Under the mandate of the Border Defence Cooperation Agreement (BDCA) inked between the two countries in October 2013, lieutenant-general-ranked officials undertake exchange visits to each other’s military theatres.

The last such engagement was on January 8-9, 2020, when the then Northern Command’s chief Lt Gen Ranbir Singh met PLA General Han Wenguo and General Zhao Zongqi, commander of the Western Theatre Command in Beijing. The PLA’s Western Theatre Command along with the Ground Forces is responsible for the front with India.

The January visit was a reciprocal one to the visit of Lt Gen Liu Xiaowu, the number two in the Western Theatre Command, in the first week of July 2018 to India.

Engagement at this level is outside the pale of the five implicit mechanisms under the overall Confidence Building Measures (CBMs) agreed to between the two countries to sort out disputes at the 3,488-km-long border.

The BDCA lays down several CBM mechanisms to defuse confrontation which includes flag meetings, periodic meetings between field commanders and government officials, the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination for India-China Border Affairs (WMCC) at the joint secretary as well as director-general border affairs level, and an annual defence dialogue at the defence secretary level.

The decision to hold such a meeting was taken a day after social media users with Indian and Chinese handles viciously battling each other on social media armed with videos and pictures of badly beaten up soldiers.

The realisation that secrecy indeed is the very soul of diplomacy, there is an attempt to keep the planned Saturday meeting outside the pale of the media.

Notably, the China government-owned daily ‘Global Times’ slammed the Indian media in its editorial on Monday: “Indian media should enhance their understanding of China and work on more balanced coverage on China and help build constructive relations. It is also hoped that they can shake off Western influence and think independently so that they can best maintain India’s interests.”

‘Global Times’ editorials are understood to reflect the government’s point of view as all of them are duly vetted before being put out for publication.