A little more than four years after a series of skirmishes along India’s disputed Himalayan border with China left 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers dead, the countries’ foreign ministers met on the sidelines of two back-to-back regional forums in July. With the flareup in the decadeslong border dispute having seriously hampered bilateral relations, there were some expectations that they might make progress on the issue and even announce a mutual withdrawal of troops, thousands of which remain deployed on each side in rugged terrain high in the mountains.
The first meeting came in early July, on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Astana, where Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar highlighted what he called “the need to redouble efforts to achieve complete disengagement” of troops.
A few weeks later, after Jaishankar met once again with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in Laos, the Indian government sounded even more optimistic. In a statement, New Delhi said the two ministers had “agreed on the need to work with purpose and urgency to achieve complete disengagement at the earliest.” To some, the statement was construed at least as an informal withdrawal agreement.