India and China appear to have resolved their years-long dispute along their border in the Himalayas, in India’s Ladakh region, where troops clashed in 2020.
FilterLabs has been following these peace talks, and the conversation around them within India, closely. Using Talisman, our data dashboard, we’ve been tracking the main narratives in the Indian press and social media, both about India and China’s relationship more broadly and about the border situation in particular. Will the agreement hold? And with their border dispute potentially resolved, what’s next for these emerging powers?
The formal agreement came on December 18th, when India’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and came to a six-point consensus on the border situation.
In the run-up to the December 18th agreement, sentiment around India and China’s relationship (the purple line below) and the India-China border talks more specifically (orange) had actually been falling for several weeks:
There had been a burst of news coverage and social media discussion, largely positive in sentiment, about the successful disengagement in eastern Ladakh, which culminated on October 21 and created an effective environment to pave the way for the diplomatic breakthrough in December. Sentiment rose again in late November as news outlets ran stories about talks between Indian and Chinese officials at the G20 (November 18-20) and the ASEAN Defense Ministers Meeting (November 21). Defense Minister Rajnath Singh was reported to have offered a message of “Cooperation over Conflict.” Stories in the coming days discussed agreement on next steps, and wondered, “Is this the beginning of a new era in Asia?”
But even as hopeful discussion continued, there were other narratives too. For example, one story highlighting India’s successful test of its first hypersonic missile noted that the test took place “just days after China showcased its advanced military capabilities.” And throughout late November and early December, we found that sentiment around the talks and India’s relationship with China trending downward.
There were numerous news stories about objections from India’s opposition parties. The opposition parties have been seeking clarity on the true meaning of the peace deal, questioning whether the settlement accepts a new status quo that does not restore the border to its previous position, and whether this new status quo is now being considered the new normal. One prominent opposition leader raised concerns about the future of the China-India partnership. He criticized the government for addressing the border talks only through a statement, arguing that it requires a thorough discussion involving the opposition as well.
What about social media? The overall trendlines and many of the narratives were similar, but FilterLabs also found negative chatter on Indian social platforms and online discourse about the impact of US President Elect Donald Trump’s economic policy. Commentators were unhappy with how Trump responded to non-U.S. transactions involving BRICS nations. Many feel that India and China need to unite on this issue, creating another reason for the two countries to collaborate and work towards shaping a multipolar world that benefits the global south.
At the same time, there was also evidence of fissures between India and China. For example, there was talk of India and Indonesia establishing a new maritime partnership to promote a free and open Indo-Pacific, which could counter-balance China's unilateral attempts to change the status quo.
In the leadup to the December border agreement, sentiment turned sharply positive. There was a lot of positive sentiment in stories about building the multipolar order, a chance to co-create the future of the Global South. Alliances between India, China, and other nations could lead to an open economic world order that ensures greater accessibility to public goods without being dominated or weaponized by any single major power, like the United States.
The news sentiment remained fairly high for a few weeks, but in late December it began to tumble. There is significant concern about China’s plan to build the world’s largest dam on the Yarlung Tsangpo River in Tibet, which becomes the Brahmaputra River. The Brahmaputra is vital for India, providing almost 30% of India’s freshwater supply and 40% of its hydroelectric power, and Talisman found widespread discussion of the potential for ecological and economic harm.
China’s move to “create” two new counties that included territory in the contested Ladakh region also brought forth a wave of strongly worded protest and indignation from Indian officials, which was widely covered in Indian media. And other stories voiced concern about the border negotiations themselves, wondering whether the LAC success had been an “illusion” and doubting that true de-escalation was likely. “China’s creeping incursions,” one commentator argued, “…belie any genuine shift away from its aggressive forward policy since the summer of 2020.”
The Indian media heralded the diplomatic breakthrough on the Ladakh border. But underneath the headlines, tensions remained around the question of who, exactly, was going to be the first among equals in any emerging Asian economic alliance.
Check out the live data on our data analysis platform, Talisman! You can explore the charts in the interactive dashboard for this newsletter, and subscribers with full platform access can even investigate the individual artifacts underlying the data.
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Our next newsletter will investigate what we can learn about Chinese views of the border situation from state media sites and social media. If you aren't subscribed to our newsletter, sign up now to receive notifications whenever we post.
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