China ambassador still not in, so MEA Jt Secy sent to embassy event

Usually, the government sends ministers, holding a Cabinet rank or a Minister of State portfolio, to National Day receptions hosted by embassies and High Commissions located in New Delhi.

With no full-time Ambassador of China to India for 11 months now, the National Day reception was hosted by Charge d’Affaires Ma Jia. She has been officiating as the interim envoy ever since Ambassador Sun Weidong left for Beijing last  October. Sun is now Vice Minister in the Chinese Foreign Ministry, a rank equivalent to a Secretary-rank official in the Indian government.

That he has not been replaced by a full-time Ambassador for 11 months now is somewhat unusual. More so because India has a full-time Ambassador in Beijing, Pradeep Rawat, an experienced China hand.

Incidentally, Gourangalal Das served as India’s representative to Taiwan until recently. He took charge last month as Joint Secretary handling China, Japan and the Koreas.

For perspective, the same day that the Chinese embassy hosted its National Day reception, the Saudi Arabia embassy also hosted a National Day reception which was attended by Smriti Irani, Union Minister for Women and Child Development, and Minority Affairs. Most times, the three Ministers of State in the MEA represent the government at the National Day receptions hosted by embassies in New Delhi.

Also, Das did not speak on the occasion – a customary speech by the representative of the Indian government is considered part of proceedings at a National Day reception.

CDA Ma Jia, however, gave a speech at the reception – the text was released by the Chinese embassy Wednesday – in which she spoke of the meetings between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Narendra Modi and expressed the hope that the two sides will follow the “important consensus reached by the two leaders” and translate it into “concerted actions taken by all departments and in all fields” to “bring China-India relations back to the track of sound and steady development at an early date”.

“China and India are eternal neighbours who need to accurately understand each other’s strategic intentions, and to support and contribute to each other’s success instead of undermining and doubting each other. We need to jointly oppose zero-sum games and keep our region away from geopolitical calculations. China and India have the ability and wisdom to find a way for friendly coexistence between neighbouring major countries and jointly create the ‘Asian Century’,” Ma said.

“We hope to properly manage and handle differences and sensitive issues. Many of the problems in China-India relations are left over from history and will take time to resolve. There is an old Chinese saying, ‘the finer details fall into place when they align with the bigger picture’. We need to consolidate and develop the overall situation of friendly cooperation between our two countries and properly manage and resolve specific issues in this process, rather than allowing specific issues to define our bilateral relations, so as to promote a more mature and stable relationship between our two countries,” she said.

In New York, External Affairs minister S Jaishankar said relations between India and China have been in an “abnormal state” since the 2020 Galwan Valley clash and it is a “possibly longer than medium-term issue”.

If the two biggest countries of the world have that degree of tension between them, “it has consequences for everybody else,” Jaishankar said while responding to a question during a conversation at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“It is very hard to try to be normal with a country which has broken agreements and which has done what it has done. So if you look at the last three years, it’s a very abnormal state,” he said.

“Contacts have been disrupted, visits are not taking place. We have, of course, this high level of military tension,” he said.

Jaishankar said the Chinese side gave different explanations at various points of time but none of them really tenable. “And since then, we have been trying to disengage. We have been partially successful,” he said.