China, India to hold high-level talks over contested border

BEIJING: China on Monday announced it would hold high-level talks later this week with India on their border disputes -- the first such discussions in five years, signalling a possible thaw in frosty ties.

Relations had been tense since a deadly military encounter in 2020 on the border between Tibet and India´s Ladakh region, which left at least 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers dead. In October, New Delhi said it had reached an agreement with Beijing on patrols in disputed areas along their common border.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi will meet with Indian National Security Adviser Ajit Doval on Wednesday in Beijing on the “China-India boundary question,” foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said in a statement.

The talks will be held in the framework of a negotiations mechanism created in 2003 to handle the thorny issue. The last such meeting took place in December 2019, according to Indian media.

The October agreement was reached shortly before a rare formal meeting -- also the first in five years -- between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on the sidelines of a BRICS summit in Russia.

China and India, the world´s two most populous nations, are intense rivals and have accused each other of trying to seize territory along their unofficial divide, known as the Line of Actual Control. The shared 3,500-kilometre frontier has been a perennial source of tension between the nuclear-armed neighbours.