The Inquiry

At the recent BRICS economic summit in South Africa, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and China’s President Xi Jinping had a rare face-to-face meeting. For years these two world powers have been in dispute over their ill-defined border in the Himalayan region. A military escalation of this dispute in 1962 led to the creation of the ‘line of actual control’ or the LAC, the de facto border between the two countries. Down the years there have been a number of clashes along the LAC and its commonly agreed that relations now are at their lowest point since 1962. And whilst India has taken steps to reduce its economic dependence on China in a bid to engage in trade relations on an equal footing, they are both competing to become the dominant power in the global south with financial aid and infrastructure projects. Both sides agreed at their BRICS meeting to intensify efforts to de-escalate border tensions. Can China and India fix their relationship?’ Contributors: Shibani Mehta, senior research analyst with the Security Studies Programme, Carnegie India, New Delhi Dr Ivan Lidarev, visiting fellow at LSE IDEAS, the London School of Economics’ foreign policy think tank and Asia security expert Dr Geeta Kochhar, assistant professor, Centre for Chinese and South-East Asian Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi Steve Tsang, professor of Chinese Studies and director of the SOAS China Institute, London Presenter: Charmaine Cozier Producer: Jill Collins Researcher: Matt Toulson Editor: Tara McDermott (Photo: China’s President Xi Jinping (L) and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Credit: Mike Hutchings/AFP)