Jaishankar says India-China ties improve as border situation moves towards normalcy

S Jaishankar said India-China ties are better now as border conditions improve. He said full normalcy in relations depends on sustained calm along the frontier.Image used for representational purposes onlyNewyork,Sep 29, 2026 10:52 ISTExternal Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has said India-China ties are "better" today than they were a couple of years ago, adding that the relationship returns to normalcy as border issues are resolved. He was speaking during a conversation hosted by Asia Society in New York on Monday.Responding to a question on India-China relations, which have improved in recent times, including after Chinese President Xi Jinping's recent visit to India for the BRICS Leaders' Summit in New Delhi, Jaishankar said, "If you asked me, compared to where you were in 2025, is the relationship better today? I would say yes. Compared to 2024, even more so."He said this was not so much a "structural change", but that ties had improved partly because they had gone "so much off-track" after the 2020 border standoff. "The moment you stabilised it, it was going to improve, because after what happened in 2020 and the long standoff that we had on the border, the relationship had really been impacted," he said.Jaishankar said that after the 2020 standoff, all "normal contacts" between the two countries had stopped. While trade continued, official exchanges, visa issuance and flights were affected. "So once the border standoff was resolved, it was natural that this would start to improve," he said. He said Delhi had long conveyed to Beijing that a standoff and a dip in ties did not help either side and instead benefited others. "We also maintained consistently a very elementary principle of statecraft - don't get locked into a problem which benefits others," he said. He added that it took time for the Chinese side to agree, but said the long standoff did not serve the interests of either country. "To the extent there is an improvement in our relations, I think it certainly helps our position," he said, not only vis-a-vis China but also vis-a-vis the rest of the world. "Because I don't want to get totally focused to my disadvantage on one particular relationship and issue. If I can find a solution which works for me, I would rather do that," he said.Jaishankar said India and China had come down to a basic principle: "the state of the border determines the state of the relationship". "You can't have tension...on the border and say the relationship should be normal. So what we've had is, as the border comes back more towards normalcy, the relationship comes back more towards normalcy, and if the relationship comes back more towards normalcy, it helps both of us," he said. In his remarks to an audience that included prominent members of the Indian-American community, Jaishankar also said the world was moving "quite visibly" towards greater multipolarity. He said the most powerful country in the world, which has been "the ballast" or "the shaper of the system as we know it currently", was seeing "an erosion in alliances" and "a tendency to do it alone", which was affecting the thinking of the rest of the world.Referring to the 'G2' summit meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington last week, he said that when the second most consequential or weightiest economy joins the first, "while they may have their points of convergence, overall they are in a competitive mode". "There are limits to what the two of them can agree upon vis-a-vis the rest of the world. And that then leaves the rest of us and the rest of us are coming to terms today with a very different America, with the fact that there is also today a certain conversation taking place between America and China," he said.He said countries were now making their own arrangements and looking for "optimal solutions". "How do we de-risk? How do we diversify? Which are the new partners? Where do we get more value out of an existing partnership?" he said. Calling the global situation difficult, Jaishankar said countries calculate, adjust and find new accommodations and solutions, and that this shift was reflected in the conversations and meetings held during the just-concluded high-level UNGA week. Overall, he said improved border conditions have helped stabilise India-China ties even as countries adapt to a changing global order.With PTI Inputs- Ends