'Competition Should Not Become Conflict', Says Jaishankar As India, China Make Efforts To Improve Ties
The EAM's remarks came after a fresh edition of talks in Beijing bunder the framework of Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on India-China Border Affairs
External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar on Wednesday said that India and China compete on many issues but it does not mean that there should be a conflict between the two countries.
The EAM’s remarks came after a fresh edition of talks were held in Beijing under the framework of Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on India-China Border Affairs (WMCC).
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“Differences should not become disputes and competition should not become conflict. We do compete on many issues, but because we compete doesn’t mean that there should be a conflict between us…," he said at an event, as reported by news agency ANI.
The EAM said that the violent clash in eastern Ladakh in 2020, in which around 40 Indian troops were killed, was “very traumatic" for India-China bilateral ties.
“We had a war with China in 1962. It took us 14 years after that to send back an Ambassador. It took us 12 more years for the Prime Minister of India to visit that country… From 1988 to 2020, while we had incidents in the border areas, we had not actually had bloodshed. The last bloodshed was 45 years before 2020. What happened in 2020 was actually very traumatic for the relationship. It wasn’t just the bloodshed, it was the disregard of written agreements," he added.
Jaishankar said that the relationship between India and China has seen some improvement from October last year.
“We are working on different aspects of it. What we are trying is to see if we can undo some of the damage which happened as a result of their actions in 2020, and we can rebuild the relationship. We genuinely, sincerely think that this is in our mutual interest, if one looks at 2020-2025, it was a period which did not serve them well, and it did not serve us well," he said.
India and China on Wednesday explored ways to rebuild ties and agreed to initiate efforts to promote people-to-people exchanges, including arrangements for resumption of direct flights and resume Kailash Manasarovar Yatra this year.
In a meeting in Beijing, the two sides also discussed resumption of dialogue mechanisms in a “step-by-step" manner to utilize them to address each other’s priority areas of interest and concern and move the relations to a “more stable and predictable path", according to the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA).
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