The eight-point outcomes that India and China released on Wednesday last week, after the Special Representatives (SRs) of the two countries met in Beijing, signal much-needed diplomatic progress. But they also mask unresolved structural issues on the border dispute. To be sure, the outcomes are better than nothing, but they are also less than what we needed. In a sense, the agreement is also a description of the position India is bargaining from, than what an ideal agreement should have looked like.

The talks between the SRs indicate progress. For instance, two more meeting points for senior commanders, two more hotline channels in the Eastern and Middle Sectors, a September meeting on trans-border rivers, three trading points reopened, the pilgrimage expanded, and the next round of talks in India in 2027, are all examples of progress. After the 2020 Galwan standoff and the uncomfortable years that followed, there is little doubt that this is significant progress.

My broader concern, however, pertains to what the document doesn’t refer to any longer, and what it has started referring to instead.

Also Read | India, China agree to promptly avert any missteps on border

Let me begin with the silences. A key achievement of more than two decades of SR negotiations, the 2005 Agreement on Political Parameters and Guiding Principles, continues to be invoked in the Sino-Indian joint documentation, and it provides great clarity on what a final resolution should entail. Article III of the 2005 Agreement commits both sides to make adjustments to their positions so as to arrive at a “package settlement”, and then adds a sentence of its own: “The boundary settlement must be final,........

© hindustantimes