In 2014, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid out a red carpet for Chinese President Xi Jinping in Modi’s home state of Gujarat in the hopes of building a rapport with the Chinese premier and laying a foundation to resolve their countries’ vexing border dispute in the Himalayas. But as they walked on the banks of the Sabarmati River and chatted in the veranda of activist Mahatma Gandhi’s ashram, Indian media was reporting on a new Chinese incursion in the mountainous region of Ladakh. Hundreds of Chinese troops were staring at their Indian counterparts while insisting on building a road inside Indian-administered territory. The standoff only ended after 16 tense days.
Five years later, in October 2019, Modi gave Xi a tour of 7th-century temples at Mamallapuram in southern India. The idea was to convey that India, like China, was an ancient civilization and hence equal to its Asian neighbor—even if it wasn’t yet economically or militarily at par. (Chinese GDP at $18 trillion is six times that of India’s, and its defense spending at $200 billion is more than three times larger.) But eight months later, Chinese troops entered Galwan in Ladakh and killed 20 Indian soldiers with nail-studded clubs. There were four Chinese deaths.
This past November, for the first time since the Galwan clashes, the two leaders met again, this time in Bali, Indonesia, as India assumed the G-20 presidency. Within a few weeks of their handshake, Chinese troops carried out another offensive, this time to occupy a mountain post in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh that China claims as its own.
