Can India and China coexist peacefully?

‘Commentators today are prone to highlight the impact of the 2020 Galwan Valley clash between Chinese and Indian patrols for the continuing tensions between the two countries. But the distance that exists between the two civilisations cannot be quite explained by this singular event’ | Photo Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto The state of relations between China and India today can best be described as managed coexistence. The moot question is whether they can, or cannot, exist peacefully in the coming decades. This issue arises because every ‘patrolling deviation’ is regarded as a ‘face-off’, endangering peace and tranquillity and in the process, Sino-Indian relations. Consequently, though not at war, even managed coexistence is proving problematic. No obvious reasons exist for the two ancient civilisations to be in conflict, notwithstanding certain border disagreements.The 1962 Sino-Indian conflict, it might be argued, was an outcome of Mao’s ‘hubris’ in the wake of his disastrous ‘Great Leap Forward’, though historians also adduce several other reasons for it. Ever since the conflict, the border in the Ladakh region has remained a serious bone of contention between the two countries. For India, Mao’s perfidy after years of ‘Hindi–Chini Bhai Bhai’ meant that China could not be trusted, and the loss of territory in both Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh became a permanent sore. However, it still does not wholly explain why feelings remain so embittered to this day. Published - October 31, 2026 01:37 am IST