India-China ties have improved in last couple of years, says EAM Jaishankar

Jaishankar was responding to a question on India-China relations, which have seen an upswing in recent times, including President Xi Jinping’s recent visit to India for the Brics Leaders’ Summit hosted by New Delhi.

NEW YORK: The ties between India and China are “better” today than they were a couple of years ago, external affairs minister S Jaishankar said, underlining that as border issues are resolved, the relationship returns to normalcy.He was responding to a question on India-China relations, which have seen an upswing in recent times, including President Xi Jinping’s recent visit to India for the Brics Leaders’ Summit hosted by New Delhi.“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,” Jaishankar said during a conversation hosted at Asia Society on Monday. He said it was not so much a “structural change”, but part of the reason things had improved was that “they had gone so much off-track that the moment you stabilised it, it was going to improve”.

After the 2020 border standoff, the relationship had been impacted, he said.Following the standoff, all “normal contacts” between the two nations had halted, though “trade was continuing”. Official exchanges, visa issuance and flights were impacted. “So once the border standoff was resolved, it was natural that this would start to improve,” he said.