India Today Indo-Japan Conclave 2022: ‘Will not let China change LAC unilaterally’, says Jaishankar on Tawang clashes

Indo-Japan Conclave 2022: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said that the Modi government will not let any country change the status quo of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) unilaterally. Jaishankar said, “We will not let any country, in this case, China, change LAC unilaterally.” He was delivering a keynote address at the India Today Indo-Japan Conclave 2022.

Jaishankar said, “Today, you have a deployment of the Indian Army on the China border that we never had. It is done to counter Chinese aggression. The Indian Army today is deployed to counter any attempt to unilaterally change LAC. That is the obligation of the Indian state and duty of the Indian Army.”

When questioned about growing foreign trade with China amid border tensions, he went back to the liberalisation, privatisation, and globalisation reforms of the 1990s and said that India opened its economy in a manner but did not use this openness to strengthen its MSME sector.

He added, “They found it difficult to compete with economies having greater imports, bigger scale, and systematic support. We did not build our supply chain. There are imports coming out of China because, for 30 years, you did not give support to the industries it needed.”

Jaishankar further said a country like India cannot pass up the manufacturing sector. The Indian Army and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) clashed along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Arunachal Pradesh’s Tawang sector.

Over 200 Chinese soldiers carried spiked clubs and sticks. At least 6 Indian soldiers were injured in the clash and airlifted to Guwahati for treatment. After the incident, the government said, “Both sides immediately disengaged from the area. As a follow-up to the incident, our own Commander in the area held a flag meeting with his counterpart to discuss the issue in accordance with structured mechanisms to restore peace and tranquility.”

Also read: Japanese businesses make ‘far more serious investments’ in China, ASEAN than in India, says Dr S Jaishankar 

Also read: ‘Our expectation levels with the Pakistanis never very high’, says S Jaishankar on Bilawal Bhutto’s comments