by Adithya M Nair

Diplomacy and negotiation are tools generally used for conflict resolution, but China has actively weaponised them to freeze Indian retaliation while trying to alter facts on the ground.

This was evident during both the Doklam clash (2017) as well as the Galwan clash (2020).

The Chinese strategy has been to deliberately flare up a border issue and swiftly initiate talks to create the appearance of reasonableness while continuing military provocation. This allows China to blame India if talks break down, and to claim India is being 'undiplomatic' if India escalates militarily. This can be seen during diplomatic talks where the political leadership will say one thing while the military leadership will say another.

During political talks, which takes place via the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on India-China Border Affairs (WMCC), the Chinese advocate for a "broad, forward-looking relationship" and suggest putting the border issue in its "proper place".

On the other hand, during military talks, they take an uncompromising hardline stance, seeking to enforce a new reality on the ground.

This can be better understood with the example of the Galwan clash.

Galwan Clash

On June 15-16, 2020, hand-to-hand combat in the Galwan Valley resulted in the death of 20 Indian soldiers and unspecified Chinese casualties. The clash was the most serious military confrontation in over five decades. Critically, this violence occurred despite consensus reached between military commanders on June 6, 2020, for de-escalation and disengagement.

The timing of the escalation was critical. A Corps Commander-level meeting took place on June 6, 2020, where both sides mutually agreed on a phased "de-escalation and disengagement" process. The violence on June 15 occurred precisely because when Indian troops went to verify if the PLA had honoured the June 6 agreement to remove their observation posts, they found the Chinese had violated the pact and kept two tents pitched at Patrolling Point 14 (PP14).

Within 48 hours of the Galwan clash, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi telephoned Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar. According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry statement, Wang "emphasised that both China and India are emerging powers with a population of over one billion people," and that "mutual respect and mutual support is the right direction" while "mutual suspicion and mutual friction are evil paths".

This rhetorical positioning, invoking shared development aspirations while framing peace as mutually beneficial, established diplomatic cover for the military escalation. Yet Wang simultaneously blamed India for "blatantly breaking the consensus" and demanded India conduct a "thorough investigation," "severely punish those responsible," and "strictly control frontline troops".

Weaponizing Diplomacy

Following the Galwan clash, India and China conducted repeated military-level talks through the Senior Highest Military Commander Level (SHMCL) mechanism. Between June and September 2020, multiple rounds of Corps Commander meetings were held. According to the Carnegie Endowment analysis, the military track focused on tactical and procedural issues, troop positions, buffer zones, phased withdrawal, while remaining compartmentalised from the broader strategic dispute.

The military talks achieved partial success: Partial disengagement from Galwan, Hot Springs, and Gogra (June-July 2020) Complete disengagement from Pangong Lake north and south banks (February 2021) Limited patrol agreements at four friction points by September 2022 However, China deliberately withheld agreement on the two most strategically significant areas: Depsang and Demchok. These remained blockaded by Chinese forces, allowing China to maintain territorial advantage without formal commitment to withdrawal.

However, this deadlock formally broke on October 21, 2024, when India and China finally signed a comprehensive border patrolling agreement specifically targeting those two remaining regions.

Between late 2022 and mid-2024, Chinese military and diplomatic negotiators continuously tried to classify the blockades at Depsang and Demchok as "legacy issues". Beijing argued that because tensions in those specific pockets originated years prior to 2020 (such as the 2013 Depsang standoff), they should not be lumped in with the post-Galwan disengagement talks. This was a tactical excuse to avoid pulling troops back from the most strategically vital areas overlooking India’s crucial Durbuk-Shyok-DBO road.

This proposal directly contradicted the military track's premise, Beijing’s political representatives aggressively pushed to decouple the border from the rest of the relationship. They used phrases like "turn over a new leaf" to pressure New Delhi into reopening its economy to Chinese investments, visas, and trade. But on the other and, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) commanders on the ground flatly refused to retreat, allowing China to maintain territorial advantages while pursuing economic and diplomatic normalisation.

The divergence between military and political tracks reflects fundamentally asymmetric conceptualisations of the relationship itself. According to former Indian Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale, "India sees relations with China in a bilateral context, Beijing has never seen it that way". He said that China views conflicts "in a wider global geopolitical context rather than in a narrow bilateral one." China's approach involves "continuous tension with another country using military or largely military means...psychology, and economic levers".

This strategic asymmetry explains the dual-track divergence, military talks address operational stability (preventing uncontrolled escalation), while political talks pursue China's broader objective of reshaping the regional balance of power without formal territorial concessions. If the border becomes decoupled (as China proposed), China can pursue broader objectives while maintaining territorial advantages. The dual-track allows both positions simultaneously, military talks address border stability and political talks decouple it from bilateral relations.

Recommendations

To counter China’s diplomatic weaponisation, India must abandon isolated diplomatic and military tracks in favour of an integrated, asymmetric counter-strategy that imposes real costs on Chinese delay.

Creating a civil-military unified negotiating command, where every border negotiation round will feature a joint panel where the military commander and the diplomat sit at the exact same table, could eliminate Beijing's ability to offer vague promises of peace to diplomats while enforcing an uncompromising stance on the ground.

India must refuse to separate political negotiations from military realities. The diplomatic track must be explicitly bound to the military track, making concrete tactical disengagement on the ground a non-negotiable prerequisite for any political or economic dialogue.

Agreeing to symmetric "buffer zones" forces India to step back from its own traditional territory. The Indian military must maintain a hardline, zero-compromise posture on the ground, refusing to accept equal-distance withdrawals from areas deep within Indian patrolling lines. Though this contains a high risk of escalation, it can successfully prevent China from forcing India to pull back from its own territories.

It is a well known fact that China uses prolonged negotiations to build permanent concrete bunkers, roads, and heliports behind the friction points. Therefore, India must aggressively accelerate its own border infrastructure development along the entire Line of Actual Control (LAC).

Bilateral negotiations allow China to leverage its superior economic and military size against India. India must continuously raise the geopolitical cost for China by embedding the LAC dispute into its partnerships with the Quad (US, Japan, Australia) and other regional states like Vietnam or Philippines.

By forcing consistency across both tracks, political and military, India can strip the Chinese dialogue process of its utility as a strategic shield and compel a more transparent resolution to the border dispute.

Aditya M Nair is an analyst with a specialisation in strategic affairs, geopolitics, aerospace, defence and foreign policy. This essay reflects author's opinions alone