‘Standoff doesn’t help, third parties will take advantage’: Jaishankar on India-China ties

A standoff between India and China does not help and external parties will take advantage of the situation, said External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar. He said India-China ties are better now, as compared to a couple of years ago.

Speaking at a conversation hosted at the Asia Society, Jaishankar said that the border issues are resolved and the relationship has returned to normalcy. "If you asked me, compared to where you were in 2025, is the relationship better today? I would say yes. Compared to 2024, even more so,” he said. This comes after Chinese President Xi Jinping's recent visit to New Delhi for the BRICS Leaders' Summit.

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Jaishankar explained that things have improved because “they had gone so much off-track that the moment you stabilised it, it was going to improve”. The two nations had halted all normal contacts even though trade continued after the 2020 border standoff. He said it was natural that the relationship would improve once the standoff was resolved.

He said that Delhi had long been conveying this once logic to Beijing: A standoff between New Delhi and Beijing, a dip in the relationship doesn’t actually help either of them. In fact, it is third parties who will take advantage of that.

“We also consistently maintained a very elementary principle of statecraft – don't get locked into a problem which benefits others,” Jaishankar said, adding that the Chinese took a little time to agree to it for “whatever reason”. “But I don't think that long standoff served our interests. It certainly didn't serve theirs. And to the extent there is an improvement in our relations, I think it certainly helps our position,” not only vis-à-vis China but vis-à-vis the rest of the world, he said.

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Jaishankar said he would rather not focus on the one disadvantage of one particular relationship but rather find a solution that works.

You can’t have tension on the border and say the relationship is normal, he said, adding that as the border comes back to normal, the relationship comes back to normal.