India and China Reach Border Deal That Could Ease Hostilities

Four years ago, several soldiers from both sides were killed in a bloody melee. Any thaw between the countries could have global implications.

India and China have reached an agreement on patrolling their shared Himalayan border, according to the two governments, potentially easing the icy hostility between the Asian giants after a deadly skirmish between their troops four years ago.

India’s foreign secretary, Vikram Misri, said during a news conference on Monday that the border agreement had come after weeks of intense talks between diplomatic and military negotiators from both sides. The agreement, Mr. Misri said, was designed to lead to “disengagement and a resolution of the issues that had arisen in these areas in 2020.”

Asked about reports of a border patrol deal, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, Lin Jian, said on Tuesday that China and India had been in “close communication.”

“Now both sides have arrived at a resolution on the relevant matter, which China views favorably,” Mr. Lin said. “Going forward, the Chinese side and Indian sides will implement those resolutions.”

India made its announcement a day before the opening of a summit of the BRICS nations, a group of emerging-market countries that includes India and China. Indian officials were silent about whether Prime Minister Narendra Modi would hold a bilateral meeting with the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, at the summit, which is being held in Kazan, a city in southwest Russia.

But the timing of the announcement indicated that Mr. Modi might address the political and economic implications of a military disengagement along the border. Any thaw between India and China could have global implications as the United States courts New Delhi to act as a counterweight to Beijing.

Mr. Misri, the Indian foreign secretary, did not specify how patrolling would play out along the Line of Actual Control, the 2,100-mile border between the two nations that was drawn up after India and China went to war in 1962. The border runs through high-altitude, inhospitable and shifting terrain in the Himalayas, making it difficult to define and easy to claim.

In June 2020, Indian and Chinese troops clashed in their worst fight in decades. At least 20 Indian soldiers were killed. The Chinese government denied reports in the Indian media that more than 40 Chinese soldiers had died. In 2021, the Chinese military’s official mouthpiece acknowledged four deaths, though doubts about the true count remained.

The new patrolling agreement will restore relations to where they were before 2020, Indian officials said.

Troops from the two countries have defended their side of the restive border for decades. While confrontations were once sporadic, they have become more frequent as China and India have constructed roads and other infrastructure along the border. In 2017, they fought over an unpaved road. After the bloody melee in 2020, smaller clashes and incursions took place in 2021 and 2022.

Conflicts between India and China have taken on more global significance in the past decade, with the nuclear-armed nations competing more intensely for dominance in South Asia.

Although China’s military is mightier than India’s, New Delhi has become more assertive on the global stage, in keeping with Mr. Modi’s ambitions to transform India into a world power. India has also benefited from increasingly frosty ties between the United States and China, building stronger trade and military ties with the West.

Analysts and commentators largely welcomed India’s announcement of the border deal.

“Restoring patrolling rights is the closest we can get to attempting to reach the pre-2020 situation,” said Deependra Singh Hooda, a retired lieutenant general who led India’s Northern Command, which covers part of the border with China. “It also sets the stage for repairing the ties between the two countries.”

Mr. Hooda added that the agreement was a win for India because the government had insisted on normalizing border relations with China before discussing wider ties.

But Bharat Karnad, a national security expert affiliated with the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research, said that the deal was not a breakthrough.

“China is stringing India along by agreeing in principle,” Mr. Karnad said. “It will take years by the usual Chinese timetable to negotiate the modalities of patrolling.”

China appeared to be tightly controlling discussion of the topic on Tuesday. A hashtag about the border agreement, started by a state media outlet, was trending on Weibo, a Chinese social media platform, but comments were limited.

Song Zhongping, a former Chinese military officer who is now an independent military commentator, said that China and India shared many strategic interests as major developing powers.

While the new deal does not mean an end to all border disputes between the countries, he said, it will at least allow them to temporarily put aside the conflict and focus on issues such as their economies.

He added that the deal would also allow China and India to avoid being pitted against each other by other countries — especially the United States. The U.S. government “hopes that India can become an important part of America’s Indo-Pacific strategy and to turn India into a bridgehead or important chess piece for containing China,” he said.

“To maintain its global hegemony, the United States constantly instigates India to engage in an arms race and buy weapons and equipment to challenge China,” Mr. Song said.

Siyi Zhao contributed reporting from Beijing.

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