Ladakh Standoff: India, China Hold Border Talks At Daulat Beg Oldie, Weeks After Foreign And Defense Ministers' Meetings

Indian Army and the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) held talks on Tuesday (16 May) at the major-general level after the recent 18th Corps Commanders' talks failed to make headway in resolving the four-year-old border standoff.

The talks were held at Daulat Beg Oldie (DBO) in Ladakh, between the Indian Army's 3rd Infantry Division commander Major General P K Mishra and his PLA counterpart.

According to a report by TOI, the talks were "a routine border management meeting held at the battalion, brigade and division levels to maintain security and stabiity along the Line of Actual Control (LAC)".

India and China are still in disagreement over the strategically located 16,000 ft high 'Depsang Plains' in Ladakh and the Charding-Nullah (CNN) junction at Demchok.

These talks are coming in the backdrop of Chinese increasingly aggressive behavior against countries such as India, Taiwan and Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Just a week ago, while the ASEAN nations navies were conducting an exercise with the Indian Navy in the South China Sea (SCS) as part of the inaugural edition of the ASEAN-India Maritime Exercises (AIME-2023), the Chinese, in an attempt to intimidate the ASEAN countries, sent eight militia vessels in the direction where the exercises were taking place.

The Indian Navy subsequently provided clarification, stating that the movements of the Chinese militia vessels were closely monitored as they began to approach the designated exercise area.

India's Defense and Foreign Ministers, along with their Chinese counterparts also held talks with each other on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Defence and Foreign Ministers' meeting.

These meetings, similar to the 18th Corps Commanders' talks, failed to yield any result in resolving the ongoing border issues.

However, both parties decided to persist with dialogue, emphasizing the importance of continued engagement. The current talks are a continuation of this commitment to maintaining open lines of communication between the two nations.

The Indian and Chinese soldiers are in the fourth year of their border standoff along the entire LAC, that started after the May 2020 brutal clash at the Galwan Valley which left 20 Indian and unknown number of Chinese soldiers dead.

Since then, clashes has occured at various points along the LAC, the most recent of which occured on December 2022 at Yangtse in Tawang, in the north-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh.