Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi to visit India next week for talks with NSA Doval

Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi will visit India next week to hold talks with National Security Advisor Ajit Doval.

Wang and Doval are the special representatives of the two countries who lead talks related to the question of boundary.

The development has come at a time when India and China have taken a series of steps to improve their relationship in recent months.

Last year, India and China reached an understanding for the partial resolution of the standoff in Ladakh. Earlier this year, China resumed Kailash-Mansarovar Yatra and India resumed giving visas to Chinese tourists . The two sides are also likely to resume direct flights within weeks.

Later this month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit China to attend the SCO Summit for the first time since 2020 when the India-China relationship nosedived over Chinese incursions in the Himalayas, particularly the Galwan Valley clash in which Chinese troops killed 20 Indian soldiers.

The meeting comes amid a flurry of India’s engagement with China and Russia at a time when India’s relationship with the United States has nosedived over tariffs. Trump has slapped 50 per cent tariffs on India — 25 per cent tariff on July 31 and additional 25 per cent on August 6 over the purchase of Russian oil.

Despite these engagements, India-China relationship is far from normal. In fact, China has continued to proactively undermine India at every step and tensions dominate the bilateral relationship even they do not make frequent headlines.

For example, China has stopped the supply of rare earths to India even as it has resumed supplies to other countries. China has also stopped the supply of speciality fertilisers to India . China has also barred its engineers from working in Indian mobile factories in a bid to hurt India’s efforts to ramp up manufacturing and discourage foreign companies’ diversifying efforts.

Above all, China has supported Pakistan to the hilt in its anti-India campaign. The Chinese support to Pakistan in the conflict in May was such that Lieutenant General Rahul R Singh, the deputy army chief, said that China was a backdoor adversary in the conflict.

“We had one border and two adversaries — actually three. Pakistan was in the front. China was providing all possible support — 81 per cent of the military hardware with Pakistan is Chinese…China is able to test its weapons against other weapons, so it’s like a live lab available to them. Turkey also played an important role in providing the type of support it did,” said Singh.