Buzz positive as India, China enter the next round of talks

Zheng Ruixiang, an India hand and a senior fellow at the China Institute of International Studies (CIIS), a thinktank associated with China’s Foreign Office, sees a solution emerging in the ‘‘near future’’.

The two Special Representatives on the border issue, National Security Adviser J N Dixit and his counterpart, Chinese vice-minister Dai Bingguo will meet in New Delhi on July 26-27 for the third round of talks on the subject. Dai held the first two rounds of talks with Brajesh Mishra during the NDA rule.

Highly placed sources told The Sunday Express, that subject to the resolution of two problems, an ‘‘east-west swap’’, as first proposed by then Premier Zhou en-Lai to former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in 1960, could become ‘‘an ingredient’’ of a future border agreement between the two nations.

Under the Zhou proposal, China would give up its ‘‘claims’’ to 90,000 sq km in Arunachal Pradesh in its eastern sector, including the sensitive border district of Tawang, and accept Indian “sovereignty” over that area. In exchange, India would give up its own claims in Aksai Chin in the western sector and essentially accept China’s sovereignty over the territory it already, mostly, controls.

However, both nations would help each other save face by making “minor adjustments” in their existing positions. While China would accept some changes on the ground that correspond to the median line in rivers, valleys, etc, so as to essentially not replicate what it believes is the “illegal” McMahon Line, India would also likely demand some changes in the Aksai Chin area, but concede major sovereignty to Beijing. Nevertheless, there remain two major problems that still need to be worked out as a precondition to this deal, the sources said. The first relates to the ‘‘exchange of populations’’ — a reference to the population of Arunachal Pradesh moving under Chinese control. India has rejected this proposal out of hand. The sources said China had in the earlier rounds of talks demanded at least a slice of the territory of Arunachal Pradesh, and therefore of its populations, but New Delhi had rejected that proposal. Secondly, sources said the success of the border talks also hinged on a successful resolution of the sensitive ‘‘tri-junction’’ area just beneath the Chumbi valley, across Bhutan, India and Tibet. Defence analysts pointed out that in this ‘‘chicken’s neck’’ area between Nepal and Bangladesh, barely 25 km at its narrowest, all the road and rail connections between the North-East and the rest of India pass. Siliguri sits at the heart of this narrow corridor, and the Chumbi valley points southwards like a dagger into Siliguri. China’s border town Yatung is barely 100 km from Siliguri and the Chumbi Valley is teeming with PLA (Chinese army) bases.

The area is so sensitive that in 1987 the two countries nearly went to war over it. When India launched Operation Chequerboard, a large-scale mobilisation to fight a hypothetical war with China, Beijing expressed ‘‘extreme concern’’ and shifted aircraft and 22,000 soldiers into Tibet.

Yet in Beijing, analysts in major thinktanks seem to have come to the conclusion that the Sino-Indian border issue will also soon be settled, with a few adjustments. Zheng said the two governments could reach a settlement on the basis of the three principles of ‘‘mutual understanding, mutual accommodation and mutual adjustments’’. Asked what the phrase meant, he said ‘‘mutual understanding’’ referred to the principle of ‘‘give and take’’. Pointing out that no government in China could accept the ‘‘illegal’’ McMahon line as a border, he said: ‘‘There must be some adjustments along the line, even if it is very minor.’’