BEIJING, Sep 4 (APP): China on Friday hoped that India would stick to equal footed consultation with mutual respect and work together with it to jointly safeguard peace and tranquillity along the border.
“On issues left over from history, like the boundary issues, China always believes finding a fair, reasonable, mutually acceptable solution through peaceful consultations,” Chinese Foreign Ministry’s Spokesperson Hua Chunying said during a regular briefing while responding to a question regarding current situation in China-India border especially in the Eastern Ladakh.
“As to the recent developments along the border, the two sides maintain communication through diplomatic and military channels,” she added.
The spokesperson hoped that India would stick to equal footed consultation with mutual respect and work together with China to jointly safeguard peace and tranquility along the border.
“I believe that is also the aspiration of the Chinese and Indian people,” she added.
Responding to a question about a possible bilateral meeting between the Chinese and Indian defence ministers in Moscow during Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) event, Hua Chunying said that she was not aware of such an arrangement.
According to media reports, the heads of defence ministries of SCO state are also likely to discuss situation in India-China border especially in Eastern Ladakh.
Chinese and Indian soldiers recently engaged in the most serious border clash since they fought a war in 1962.
On June 15, the Chinese and Indian soldiers engaged in a nightly medieval clash in Galwan Valley, where India was trying to build a strategic road connecting the region to an airstrip close to China. As many as 20 Indian soldiers were killed during the fight.
China blamed India for the incidents, calling the actions by Indian border troops “infringing and provocative.”
Since then the two countries have held several rounds of commanders’ level talks to ease the situation on the border in Galwan Valley.
The disputed border covers nearly 3,500 kilometers of frontier that the two countries call the Line of Actual Control and that stretches from Ladakh in the north to the Indian state of Sikkim in the northeast.
The two countries have been trying to settle their border dispute since the early 1990s without success. Since then, soldiers from the two sides have frequently faced off along the contested frontier.
India unilaterally declared Ladakh a federal territory while separating it from disputed Kashmir in August 2019. China is among the countries to strongly condemn the move, raising it at international forums including the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).
