India-China relations have improved a lot over the last year: Army Chief General Dwivedi

NEW DELHI: Indian Army Chief General Upendra Dwivedi on Monday said that relations between India and China have improved a lot over the last year. He attributed this change to a rise in communication at various levels between the two countries. General Dwivedi said, I would like to say that there has been a lot of change in the last year. From October 2024 to today, there has been a lot of improvement in our relations. The Army Chief was speaking at the Chanakya Defence Dialogue Curtain Raiser event at Manekshaw Convention Centre in New Delhi. Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with President Xi Jinping in Kazan in October 2024. The meeting was the first after Indian and Chinese troops disengaged from Depsang and Demchok, the last remaining standoff positions, in eastern Ladakh. A huge body of troops had been positioned eye-to-eye since May 2020. This had led to tensions and precautionary deployments all along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). India and China had welcomed the positive momentum and steady progress in bilateral relations when the two leaders met again on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Tianjin in August 2025. Elaborating on the situation on the ground, General Dwivedi said that when PM Modi went for the SCO meeting, here was a discussion that first of all, we should have a dialogue and we have to find a solution to this conflict. The Army Chief noted that a number of meetings have taken place at multiple levels including those between the Special Representatives -- National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. Meetings have also taken place between Wang Yi and External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, while Defence Ministers Rajnath Singh and his counterpart Admiral Dong Jun met on the sidelines of the SCO Defence Ministers meeting in Qingdao, China. General Dwivedi observed that they came to the conclusion that the more we talk on the border, the better. There have been a lot of meetings between military officials of India and China at every level as the two countries move forward on the path to normalcy along the 832 km LAC in eastern Ladakh, He highlighted that even the ground level commanders are in continuous touch. Earlier it was only at the core commander level. Now we have taken it to the battalion commander level, company commander level, he said. In the last one year, we have done 1100 ground level interactions. That is, three interactions every day, said the Army Chief. If we take it to the higher level, then we will get stuck in the files. But if we go to the lower level, it is likely to be solved. There are directions from above too to solve it as much as possible at the ground level, he said. But the major decisions will still be taken at the higher level, he added. Citing an example of the conversations taking place at the ground level, the Army Chief said, Suppose they have to do some construction, then they tell us first. Earlier, they used to tell us, and such conversations used to be heated. But nowadays, if some construction is not right and if we tell them, they remove it. So, the cooperation at the ground level is very good. Talking on disengagement, he said India and China have formed two groups -- the expert group and working group. The Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination (WMCC) also has representatives of our army. So these two groups will tell us the way forward, how we can solve the boundary problems. And whatever guidance they give, we will move forward according to that, he added.