Need for Autonomous Foreign Policy on China

The unsettled border issue is the Achilles heel of India–China relations. It erupts every few years, bringing the two countries on the verge of military confrontation. Temporary peace is restored through negotiations limited to resolving the stand-off and brushing the lasting solution aside. The crisis mitigation process after every military engagement is mechanically driven, repeating with boring regularity; phrases used by the previous joint statements. 

“Not allowing differences to become disputes” is one such phrase that has  again appeared in the most recent India–China joint statement issued after two-hour-long negotiations between External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) meeting in Moscow. The diplomatic phrase was extensively used during the informal summit in Wuhan between  Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the post-Doklam clash in 2017.