Indian, Chinese defence ministers likely to meet next week in Laos

Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and Chinese Defence Minister Dong Jun are likely to meet next week in Laos on the sidelines of the ASEAN Defence Minister’s Plus meeting (ADMM +). ADMM Plus is an annual meeting that includes ASEAN defence ministers and defence ministers of eight countries – Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Russia and the United States.

A request has been made by the Chinese side for the meeting. This is expected to be the first ministerial meeting between the Indian and Chinese sides since the Kazan meeting between President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which was seen as a breakthrough in the normalisation of ties. 

The last meeting between Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and his Chinese counterpart was in April 2023 in India. That time, the then Chinese Defence Minister Li Shangfu had travelled to Delhi for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation or SCO Defence Minister meeting. While the border issue dominated the meeting, the fact that Rajnath chose to do a namaste, instead of a handshake with his Chinese counterpart, showed that the ties remained frosty. 

Prior to the 2023 meet, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and the then Chinese Defence Minister General Wei Fenghe met on the sidelines of the SCO meet in Russia’s Moscow in 2020, just months after the Galwan incident. The deadly clashes in Galwan, Eastern Ladakh in June of that year left 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers dead.

A ministerial meeting will be seen as a positive element in ties, just a month after the Kazan meeting in October at the leaders’ level. The October meeting on the sidelines of the BRICS summit was the first bilateral meeting between Indian and Chinese leaders since the Galwan incident which led to a downfall in the ties of the two Asian giants. Following the clashes, India had banned a number of Chinese apps and increased scrutiny on Chinese investments. 

One of the key outcomes of the Kazan meeting was that the Special Representatives on the boundary question – Indian NSA Ajit Doval and China’s Wang Yi will meet at an early date. Foreign ministers of the two countries are also expected to meet at a later date. The Kazan thaw coincided with the patrolling agreement between India and China and disengagement in Depsang and Demchok at the Line of Actual Control or LAC. A revival in India-China ties could have positive ties in trading ties and comes ahead of Beijing’s presidency of the SCO summit next year.