India And China Agree to Resume Direct Flights After Five Years

India and China have agreed to resume direct flights as ties between the two Asian giants ease nearly five years after a deadly dispute on their mutual border in the Himalayas.

India’s foreign ministry announced the thaw on Monday, saying the two countries will negotiate a framework on flights at a meeting to be held soon.

The news follows a meeting between India’s top diplomat Vikram Misri and Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Sun Weidong in Beijing on Monday.

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“Specific concerns in the economic and trade areas were discussed with a view to resolving these issues and promoting long-term policy transparency and predictability,” the Indian statement said.

Reuters reported in June that China’s government and airlines had asked India’s civil aviation authorities to re-establish direct air links, but New Delhi resisted as the border dispute continued to weigh on ties.

Flights from India to China were suspended during the Covid-19 outbreak in 2020 and while flights to Hong Kong resumed after pandemic lockdowns eased, flights to mainland China did not restart because of prolonged tension on their border.

But a meeting between the two countries’ leaders last October opened the door to warmer ties.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on the sidelines of a BRICs summit in Russia for their first talks in five years.

That reportedly led to many rounds of talks between military leaders and diplomats to cool tensions on their border, where a deadly clash occurred in June 2020.

It also opened the way to India reopening its skies and the launch of fast-tracking visa approvals, Indian government sources told Reuters.

Both nations have also agreed to resume dialogue for functional exchanges step by step and with an early meeting of the India-China Expert Level Mechanism, India’s foreign ministry said.

“The rapprochement also included agreements on improving access to journalists from both sides and facilitating pilgrimages to a Hindu shrine in Tibet,” according to the New York Times.

China’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement that listed six areas in which “common understandings” were reached, Xinhua said on Tuesday.

One related to flights and journalists, others to pilgrimages, cultural exchanges and one to “continue cooperation on cross-border rivers and to maintain communication on the early holding of a new round of meeting of the expert level mechanism on cross-border rivers.”

The latter relates to a massive new dam that China has proposed on the Yarlung-Zangbo River – known as the Brahmaputra in India and Bangladesh.

China and India should commit to “mutual support and mutual achievement” rather than “suspicion” and “alienation,” Wang said during the meeting on Monday, according to the Chinese foreign ministry’s readout.