Bilateral talks held between India and China in G20 meet

Border issue needs to be put in proper place says Qin

India and China's foreign ministers met on the sidelines of a Group of 20 meeting in New Delhi, signalling a thaw in their tense relationship since 2020. Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said the talks with his Chinese counterpart, Qin Gang, "focused on addressing current challenges to the bilateral relationship, especially peace and tranquilly in the border areas".

“We should put the border issue in the appropriate place in bilateral relations and promote the early shift of the border situation to normalised control,” Qin told Jaishankar during the meeting, their first since Qin took over as China’s foreign minister replacing Wang Yi.

Qin met with Jaishankar a day after Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said, "China attaches great importance to India." Qin is in India for a meeting of G20 foreign ministers. 

She stated that maintaining good relations between the two neighbours is critical to their mutual interests.

"The two sides should implement the important consensus reached by the two leaders as soon as possible, maintain dialogue, settle differences, and promote the improvement of bilateral relations, and move forward steadily," Qin said, according to a Chinese foreign ministry readout released on Friday morning, several hours after the bilateral meeting in New Delhi.

Qin also went on to say that China is to resume exchanges and cooperation with India in various fields as soon as possible, resume direct flights as soon as possible, and facilitate people-to-people exchanges. Direct flights between the two countries have been suspended since March 2020, when China closed its international borders due to a Covid-19 outbreak which has been is  interpreted by many as a symptom of the worst chill in ties between the two countries since the Galwan Valley incident in June 2020

Following the lifting of Covid-19-related restrictions in recent months, Beijing has resumed direct flights with a number of countries, including South Asian countries such as Bangladesh and Pakistan.

The two nations has been in tangled in border dispute for a long time and has has confrontation as recent as December last year. One of the the Chinese readout quoted Jaishankar as saying, “The current border situation between the two countries is gradually stabilising, and both sides should work together to maintain peace and tranquillity in the border area.”

Qin went on to say that China and India have a lot in common when it comes to protecting developing countries' rights and interests, promoting South-South cooperation, and addressing global challenges like climate change.