The let-bygones-be-bygones optics of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and China’s President Xi Jinping during the 21-nations BRICS summit held in New Delhi on September 12-13 offers new hope of the beginning of the end of the long-festering border dispute that provoked a Sino-India war in 1962 and has poisoned relations between Asia’s most populous countries for half a century. The two leaders’ firm handshake seemed to confirm the detailed 25th round negotiations concluded by National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and China’s foreign minister Chang Yi a fortnight earlier in Beijing, which resulted in a detailed 8-point consensus.

In the eight-point consensus, both countries agreed to an “early and substantial harvest” of the border delimitation issue and border management until the issue is resolved. Moreover, a new Expert Group on Boundary Delimitation has been set up in addition to a Working Group on Border Management established last year which substantially reduced the possibility of a 2020 Galwan-style clash.

These developments are overdue. Because meanwhile business and trade between our two countries has been growing and offers great promise. The value of imports from China has risen from $5.21 billion in 2020-21 to $149.5 billion in 2025-26, while, our exports were valued at a mere $20 billion in the latter year. Moreover, the composition of imports from China is revealing. They comprise mainly electronic components, machinery for industry, computers and intermediate pharma chemicals. Evidently Indian industry, even if not hyper-nationalists, would dearly appreciate settlement of the border issue in the interest of smooth trade relations with our fast-track neighbour nation with whom we have had thousands of years of cultural exchange and harmonious relations. Until the Nehru government’s ill-advised refusal in the 1950s to negotiate border lines arbitrarily imposed by the colonial British government of India.

In the climate of hysteria generated after the 31-day Sino-India border clash of 1962 in the north-east in which the Indian Army suffered a rout, there is insufficient awareness in India that successive governments in Delhi have declined to negotiate border delimitation with China in right earnest and good faith. This despite China having demonstrated willingness to make concessions. For instance, after China unilaterally declared cessation of hostilities in November 1962, Chinese troops withdrew north of the critically important town of Tawang in Arunachal which they had taken. Moreover in 2003, at the behest of then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, China conceded that Sikkim is an inalienable part of India.

In the circumstance, it is high time India dropped our negotiation position that the imposed boundaries demarcating the 3,488-km Sino-India border are written in stone. An “early and substantial harvest” of borders demarcation is a necessary pre-condition for the end of Western hegemony and dawn of the Asian century.