China-India relations appear to be on the mend. Take a look at the last ten days of July. On July 22, external affairs minister S Jaishankar met his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in Manila, on the margins of the East Asia Summit. Five days later, foreign secretary Vikram Misri was in Beijing, meeting vice-minister Hua Chunying, where both sides said the customary things about peace and tranquillity along the border.

On July 30, our Mandarin-speaking ambassador in Beijing called on a Chinese vice-minister to discuss trade and market access, with Indian pharmaceuticals reportedly on the table. That is a lot in 10 days for two countries that are known to move slowly. Are we warming up to the Chinese too fast? Have we forgotten the winter of Galwan? There are two schools of thought in Delhi.

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One says, in criticism of course, that India is “drifting” fast into accommodation with China: that Galwan has been written off and that we are trading our way back into a dependence vis-à-vis China. The second set of arguments holds that Quad is ending, the rupture with the US is permanent, our Indo-Pacific commitments were always thinner than we admitted, and so the reset with China is the real story.

Both sides assume that India must eventually settle into one clear posture: Balance China or trade with China. Both have been predicting such a clear decision, one way or another, for two years. But a closer look would suggest that the policy has been more complicated and, I think, in the........

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