Xi, Modi Hold Meeting for China-India Border Talks

After a rare face-to-face meeting, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had "candid and in-depth" discussions to reduce tensions along their disputed border, Beijing said on Friday.

Since a violent border confrontation in the Himalayas in 2020 that resulted in the deaths of 20 Indian soldiers and at least four Chinese soldiers, relations between the two most populous nations in the world have been severely strained. 

Since then, tens of thousands of soldiers have gathered in large numbers on each side of the border. They continue despite 19 sessions of negotiations between senior military officials from the two nations.

The leaders met on Thursday while attending the BRICS summit in South Africa in what China's foreign ministry characterized as a "candid and in-depth exchange of views".

"President Xi stressed that improving China-India relations serves the common interests of the two countries and peoples," a ministry spokesman said on Friday. 

"The two sides should bear in mind the overall interests of their bilateral relations and properly handle the border issue so as to jointly safeguard peace."

India's foreign secretary said Modi had highlighted unresolved issues along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) that divides India's Himalayan region of Ladakh from Chinese territory, where the deadly 2020 clash took place. 

"Modi underlined that... observing and respecting the LAC are essential for normalizing India-China relationship," Vinay Kwatra told reporters on Thursday.

India has been wary of its northern neighbor's growing military assertiveness and disputes over the two Asian giants' 3,500 km shared frontier have been a perennial source of tension.

China also claims all of India's northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, considering it part of Tibet, and the Asian giants fought a full-scale border war there in 1962.

Both countries have regularly accused each other of trying to seize territory along their unofficial divide, known as the Line of Actual Control.

The clash in 2020 along the border dividing Tibet from India's state of Ladakh led to a sharp deterioration in relations.

Modi's government has pumped billions of dollars into connectivity projects on its side of the border to boost civilian presence, and establish new paramilitary battalions.

Additionally, it is attempting to forge stronger connections with Western nations such as other Quad members the US, Japan, and Australia, which are all courting it as a rival to China.

The border conflicts have not been resolved after 19 rounds of military negotiations between Beijing and New Delhi, including the most recent earlier this month. 

Since the conflicts in 2020, Xi and Modi have both participated in a number of global diplomatic gatherings.

But Thursday was the first time the two presidents had spoken face to face since a short exchange at the G20 Summit in Bali in November of last year.