Foreign minister Wang to push for normalisation of ties with India

Chinese foreign minister Wang’s visit comes after Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered his condolences to Chinese people after flight MU 5735 crashed in Guangxi province with all 132 passengers losing their lives.

Updated on: Mar 22, 2022, 15:13:40 IST

By Shishir Gupta, Hindustan Times, New Delhi

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Chinese foreign minister and state councilor Wang Yi is arriving on a two-day visit to India on March 24-25 as part of an effort to put bilateral ties back on rails after the PLA aggression in East Ladakh in May 2020.

External affairs minister S Jaishankar and Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi have met in Moscow in September 2020 and Dushanbe in September 2021 after the PLA belligerence in East Ladakh. (AP file photo)

It is understood that State Councilor Wang will meet the Indian leadership with a delegation-level meeting with the external affairs minister (EAM) S Jaishankar and a possible call on the top leadership. The two foreign ministers have met in Moscow in September 2020 and Dushanbe in September 2021 after the PLA belligerence in East Ladakh.

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While New Delhi and Beijing are discussing the disengagement and de-escalation across the East Ladakh Line of Actual Control (LAC) at the military commander’s level, there is forward movement expected on around 12,000 Indian students stranded in China after Covid-19 struck Wuhan in December 2019. It is understood that many Indian families are also facing artificial separation with people stuck in China.

Although India is categorical that normalization of bilateral ties with China is dependent on peace and tranquillity all along the LAC with April 2020 status quo ante restored in East Ladakh, the other Indian worry is the burgeoning trade deficit with Beijing with the figure climbing upwards of USD 80 billion.

Foreign minister Wang’s visit comes after Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered his condolences to Chinese people after flight MU 5735 crashed in Guangxi province with all 132 passengers losing their lives. Diplomatic sources based in China and New Delhi feel that PM Modi’s message was purely humanitarian and not much should be read into it. Wang Yi comes to New Delhi after attending the OIC Foreign Minister’s meeting as a special invitee in Islamabad and proceeds to Kathmandu from India.

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In Pakistan, foreign minister Wang has proposed a four-point formula to enhance strategic cooperation and pragmatic cooperation between two countries. The four-point formula was spelt out by Minister Wang in a joint press conference with his Pakistani counterpart. However, in Chinese superstition, four is a word representative of death with high rise buildings omitting the fourth or the fourteenth floors like the 13th floor in the west. The Chinese people avoid mobile numbers ending with four to avoid getting hit by bad luck.

The basic purpose of foreign minister Wang’s visit, which was accepted at this request, is to sus out the mood of the Indian leadership towards Beijing and the war in Ukraine. While Minister Wang moves to Kathmandu for pushing the belt road initiative, the meeting of QUAD leaders in Tokyo is expected to take place after the Australian general election next month.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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