Trump, trade wars and geopolitics are nudging Delhi and Beijing closer together – despite a record trade deficit and lingering border row
But with the machinery of engagement whirring once more amid flaring global trade wars and shifting strategic alliances, hopes have sprung anew that Asia’s two largest economies might finally move past the years of suspicion and silence.
“If they can get their act together, they have more common things to work upon,” said Yashwant Deshmukh, independent political analyst and founder of Indian pollster C-Voter. “There is great potential, but they really need to work on the trust deficit.”
India and China share a vast, undemarcated frontier snaking through the Himalayas. Since a brief but bitter war in 1962, an unofficial Line of Actual Control has served as an uneasy boundary.
The diplomatic thaw is now feeding economic hopes. Last weekend, Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman noted “some kind of beginning” in a revival of business relations. “How far it will go is something we will have to wait and see,” she said.
