New Delhi: Chief of Army Staff General Upendra Dwivedi, on Monday, underlined a marked improvement in India–China relations. He stated that sustained political engagement over the past year had begun to reflect positively at the ground level.
The senior-most Army Commander described the last twelve months as a period of “visible improvement” in bilateral communication and conflict-management mechanisms while speaking at the inaugural session of the Chanakya Defence Talk in the national capital.
According to the Army Chief, the turnaround began in October 2024, when there was a marked acceleration in the political-level engagement between the two countries after it had gone through a long spell of strain. He pointed to continuous conversations between leaders in New Delhi and Beijing as a key factor behind the easing of tensions. “From October 2024 to today, there has been a significant improvement. This is because there has been sustained discussion between political leaders on both sides. The more normalcy we restore, the more both countries benefit,” General Dwivedi said.
The COAS termed the October 21, 2024, agreement in Eastern Ladakh as a watershed moment, saying the successful disengagement brought “immense benefit” to both sides.
He reminded his audience that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had met Chinese President Xi Jinping twice-first in October last year, and then this September this year during the SCO Summit-and that both leaders reaffirmed a commitment to continuous dialogue and peaceful conflict resolution.
He reinforced that once the political direction is clear, other diplomatic and military mechanisms start working more effectively. Regular meetings between the foreign ministers and the National Security Advisors—last on August 18–19—had sorted out several outstanding issues, he said. He also alluded to Defence Minister Rajnath Singh’s visit to China in June this year, when both sides acknowledged the need to decide if the current diplomatic “freeze” should finally start to thaw.
General Dwivedi also highlighted that similar sentiments were aired at the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting held in Malaysia on November 1, where both countries agreed that sustained and structured talks on the border were necessary for long-term stability.
Reflecting on the broader relationship between India’s military strength and its diplomatic leverage, the Army Chief recalled an interaction with External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar. “He told us that if our Army had not been strong on the border, India’s diplomacy would not have had the platform it enjoys today,” he said.
Explaining this synergy, he described diplomacy as soft power and the military as hard power, adding that the fusion of the two produced what he termed “smart power”, a principle underlying India’s evolving defence diplomacy.
He added that militaries around the world speak a sort of “universal language” that allows for the building of trust through combined exercises, training programs, defence exports and imports, technical exchanges, and cooperation in multilateral forums such as the United Nations. Quoting the Defence Minister, he said, “music and the military are the two languages understood globally without translation.”
General Dwivedi also spoke in detail about the substantial momentum built at the ground level along the LAC. In the last year, he said, Indian and Chinese troops engaged in almost 1,100 local interactions, or an average of three meetings a day. As against the practice of most conversations happening at the Corps Commander level in earlier years, the system now stresses communication between battalion- and company-level commanders.