Asian Angle | Can China and India agree on new ways to solve old problems?
- The 1988 model adopted by Deng Xiaoping and Rajiv Gandhi to shelve differences and find common ground to cooperate needs to evolve
- The challenge for Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to set a higher bar for dialogue, writes Ananth Krishnan
China, for its part, has dispatched a new envoy to New Delhi to begin overseeing preparations for Xi’s visit. Luo Zhaohui has been succeeded by Sun Weidong, one of the most seasoned South Asia experts in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who was most recently the Chinese envoy to Pakistan and earlier served as the “point man” on India as the deputy director general of the ministry’s Asia Department.
This is Sun’s second stint in India, following a three-year term as counsellor in the Chinese embassy in Delhi. Suffice to say, there are few better candidates for the job.
Luo and Sun have in recent days sent carefully calibrated signals on the state of relations. At his farewell reception in New Delhi in May, Luo highlighted the need to “break the circle of ups and downs” that has plagued the relationship.
During his term, the border stand-off in Doklam – Donglang, as China calls it – marked the recent low point in relations before the rapprochement that led to the first “informal summit” between Xi and Modi at Wuhan in April 2018.