Bangkok:External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Thursday said that the relationship between India and China is going through an “extremely difficult phase” after the prolonged standoff between the two countries at the border.
Jaishankar made the remarks while responding to a series of questions after delivering a lecture on ‘India’s Vision of the Indo-Pacific’ at the prestigious Chulalongkorn University.
He said during this very period, the landscape also started to change as “we saw larger economic and political re-balancing.”
“Just as India developed greater interests in the Pacific, countries of East Asia, for example have also been more visible in the Indian ocean. Even distant economies actually traverse the sea lanes from the Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean as part of their supply chain commitments. The economic reality of globalization was that we are not merely more regional but actually much more active beyond our region in the search of markets and resources,” he said.
This comes as Chinese and Indian troops are engaged in a prolonged standoff in Eastern Ladakh even as the two sides have so far held 16 rounds of Corps Commander Level talks to resolve the standoff which erupted on May 5, 2020, following a violent clash in the Pangong lake areas