Chill lingers over China-India relations amid Jaishankar’s diplomatic barrage at UN General Assembly
- Leaders gather for the General Assembly and a BRICS foreign ministers meeting is scheduled, but the top Chinese and Indian diplomats have no plans to talk
- The two countries’ disputes threaten to erode the significance of forums like BRICS, the economic grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa
Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar has unleashed a diplomatic blitz as he meets with envoys and heads of states from around the world on the sidelines of the annual United Nations General Assembly, with more than 50 official engagements scheduled during an 11-day visit to the United States.
But there’s one notable exception in his public itinerary: no bilateral meetings are planned with China, India’s biggest neighbour.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is also in New York to attend the UN General Assembly. Though the two leaders will come face to face for a meeting of BRICS foreign ministers this week, India-China ties seem to be frozen.
The diplomatic chill first became apparent with what some described as Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “no handshake, no smiles” mutual snub at the Shanghai Corporation Organisation summit last week in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.
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Jabin T Jacob, a professor of international relations with a focus on China at Delhi’s Shiv Nadar University, called it an “explicit declaration of the direction of India’s relationship with China”.
He also pointed out that it was the leaders’ first in-person encounter since the May 2020 clashes in the Galwan Valley along the disputed Indo-China border. The skirmishes, among the worst since the 1962 war between the countries, killed at least 11 Indian and four Chinese soldiers.
