Gautam Bambawale
The India-China border dispute is old, but for the first time in decades, lives have been lost in clashes on the border in Ladakh. The situation is tense and unpredictable.
The June 15 Galwan incident has sparked debate on several issues confronting the India-China bilateral relationship.
Why have the Chinese precipitated the situation on the LAC? What do they want; what message are they seeking to send? How do their actions fit in with agreements reached between the two countries at the highest level? Where is the current stand-off headed, and what diplomatic and military options does India have to respond to the PLA’s incursions?
For possible answers to some of these questions, and to understand the big regional and global geopolitical picture within which this conflict is situated, The Indian Express has invited Gautam Bambawale, New Delhi’s Ambassador to Beijing between November 2017 and November 2018, and one of the best known diplomat-analysts of India’s complex relationship with China.
Bambawale led the Indian diplomatic initiative that defused the situation after the Chinese entered Depsang in Ladakh in 2013, and he was the head of India’s mission in China during the First Informal Summit between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping in Wuhan in April 2018.
Ambassador Bambawale will be the Expert Guest at the latest edition of E-Xplained, the unique series of explanatory conversations that The Indian Express hosts from time to time. Expert Guests at E-Xplained sessions since the lockdown began have included Kerala’s Health Minister K K Shailaja, Public Health Foundation of India president Dr K Srinath Reddy, industrialist Dr Naushad Forbes, and capital markets expert Nilesh Shah.