Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi held “candid and in-depth” talks to ease tensions along their disputed frontier, Beijing said on Friday (Aug 25), after a rare face-to-face encounter between the two leaders.
Relations between the world’s two most populous countries have been in deep freeze since a deadly Himalayan border clash that killed 20 Indian soldiers and at least four Chinese troops in 2020
Tens of thousands of soldiers have since massed along both sides of the border. They remain despite 19 rounds of talks between top military officials of both countries.
India has been wary of its northern neighbour’s growing military assertiveness and disputes over the two Asian giants’ 3,500km shared frontier have been a perennial source of tension.
China also claims all of India’s northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, considering it part of Tibet, and the Asian giants fought a full-scale border war there in 1962.
Both countries have regularly accused each other of trying to seize territory along their unofficial divide, known as the Line of Actual Control