China’s Border Diplomacy: Tactical Peace, Strategic Uncertainty

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China’s disputes with India, Bhutan, Japan, and in the South China Sea expose its selective diplomacy and unfinished territorial ambitions.

By TRH Global Affairs Desk

NEW DELHI, August 16, 2025 — China on Saturday announced that Foreign Minister Wang Yi will visit India for the 24th round of talks between the Special Representatives of China and India on the Boundary Question. The visit has brought spotlight on the festering border tension between world’s two most populous nations.

“From August 18 to 20, Member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, Minister of Foreign Affairs and China’s Special Representative on the China-India boundary question Wang Yi will visit India,” said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China on Saturday.

Wang will hold delegation level talks with India’s Special Representative (SR) Ajit Dival. The Indian SR, who is also the National Security Advisor, had visited Beijing in December last year for the 23^rd round of the meeting on border management.

China in the past has resolved border disputes with several nations. But Beijing has largely shown least interest in resolving the border disputes with India.

Borders are the scars of history, and for China, they are also instruments of power. With 14 neighbours on land and a string of rivals across disputed waters, Beijing’s cartographic ambitions remain as contested as ever.

Over the decades, China has oscillated between pragmatism and provocation: settling disputes where it suits its interests and keeping others alive as leverage in its long game of strategic dominance.

Take India. The October 2024 agreement in eastern Ladakh was hailed as a “breakthrough” after four years of military standoff. Soldiers pulled back, patrols were staggered, and the specter of another Galwan-like clash was pushed away—for now.

But scratch the surface, and it becomes clear that this was a tactical pause, not a strategic settlement. The deeper contest—over Aksai Chin, Arunachal Pradesh, and the very definition of the Line of Actual Control—remains untouched. Both armies still stare each other down with 50,000 troops apiece, roads and airstrips creeping closer to the Himalayan ridgelines. The mistrust is not going anywhere.

Contrast that with Russia. In the 1990s and 2000s, Moscow and Beijing painstakingly drew lines on maps and demarcated river islands, burying centuries of suspicion.

Today, Sino-Russian ties rest on a foundation of settled borders and shared resentment of the West. When China floated a new map in 2023 showing an old Russian island claim, Moscow brushed it off. That shrug was less about geography and more about politics: the Kremlin needs Beijing, and Beijing knows it.

Elsewhere, China has shown a knack for pragmatic diplomacy. Central Asian states, once wary of Beijing’s reach, accepted border treaties in the 1990s. Vietnam, despite fighting a war in 1979, signed a land-border deal in 1999—though its South China Sea disputes with China simmer on.

But the open sores remain telling. Bhutan is one such case, where China’s creeping encroachments—roads, villages, military outposts—have chipped away at the fragile sovereignty of the Himalayan kingdom. For India, watching from the Siliguri Corridor, this is not just about Bhutanese land but about its own strategic choke point.

Myanmar is another: here, the border tension isn’t about land but about instability seeping across, as China’s investments collide with the chaos of civil war.

Then there are the seas. In the South China Sea, Beijing’s “nine-dash line” ambitions have placed it on a collision course with Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei. Concrete islands bristling with missiles are China’s way of saying that maps alone aren’t enough facts on the water matter more.

The Philippines, emboldened by a US treaty, continues to resist, but Manila’s coast guard vessels are no match for China’s vast armada. Arbitration rulings have gone in favour of smaller states, but Beijing has brushed them aside, asserting that history, not law, dictates the rules of the sea.

In the East China Sea, the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands pit China against Japan, a US ally. Here, too, Beijing plays the long game: constant coast guard intrusions, calibrated provocations, and a readiness to exploit Tokyo’s every move. It is a dangerous dance in waters tied to national pride and rich resources.

The larger pattern is unmistakable. China resolves disputes when it wants stability—when it needs to focus on economic growth, counterbalance rivals, or deepen alliances. But it keeps others alive deliberately, as bargaining chips and pressure points.

Settled borders with Russia free Beijing to push harder against India. Agreements in Central Asia allow it to concentrate on maritime expansion.

For India and other neighbours, the lesson is sobering. China’s border diplomacy is not about peace; it is about timing. Agreements are tactical interludes, not endings. Stability is conditional, and compromise is transactional. This is evident in the fact that India and China will hold 24^th round of talks since commissioning it in 2005 with no breakthrough yet.

The map, in Beijing’s eyes, is never finished—it is a work in progress, shifting with power and opportunity.

The world should take note: China’s borders tell a story not of closure, but of unfinished ambition.

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