India-China ties improving as border returns to normalcy, says Jaishankar

India's External Affairs Minister, S. Jaishankar, has said that ties with China are in better shape today than they were a few years ago, attributing the shift to the easing of tensions along the border.

Speaking at a conversation hosted by the Asia Society on Monday, Mr. Jaishankar said the improvement should not be read as a structural transformation. Much of it, he suggested, stems from the fact that the relationship had fallen so far after the 2020 border standoff that any stabilisation was bound to produce visible gains.

He recalled that normal contacts between the two countries had come to a halt after the 2020 standoff. While trade continued, official exchanges, the issuance of visas and flight connectivity were all affected. Once the border situation was resolved, he said, it was only natural that the relationship would begin to recover.

Mr. Jaishankar said New Delhi had long argued to Beijing that a prolonged standoff and a weakened relationship served neither side, and that third parties stood to gain from such a situation. He described this as a basic principle of statecraft — avoiding being trapped in a problem that benefits others — and acknowledged it had taken time for the Chinese side to come around to that view.

He framed the approach in terms of a simple formulation: the state of the border determines the state of the relationship. Tension along the frontier cannot coexist with a normal relationship, he said, and as the border moves back towards normalcy, so does the wider relationship, to the benefit of both countries.

Mr. Jaishankar also said the improvement helps India's position not only with respect to China but in its dealings with the rest of the world, since it allows New Delhi to avoid being consumed by a single relationship or dispute.

Turning to the wider global picture, he said the world is moving visibly towards greater multipolarity. He pointed to what he described as an erosion of alliances and a tendency towards acting alone on the part of the most powerful country, which he said has a significant impact on how other nations think.

Referring to the recent meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington, Mr. Jaishankar said that when the two weightiest economies come together, they remain in a broadly competitive mode despite any points of convergence. There are limits to what the two can agree upon in relation to the rest of the world, he said, leaving other countries to make their own arrangements.

He said nations are looking for optimal solutions — how to de-risk, how to diversify, where to find new partners and how to draw more value from existing ones. Countries respond, calculate, adjust and find new accommodations, he said, and that process is how the international order evolves. He added that this dynamic was reflected in the conversations and meetings held during the recently concluded high-level week at the United Nations General Assembly.