Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Tuesday said that India should "conscientiously withdraw" its troops from the Doklam tri-junction, just a day before National Security Adviser (NSA) Ajit Doval was leaving to attend the BRICS meet, July 27 and 28, at Beijing.
Wang's comment comes after a day when the Chinese Defence Ministry urged India to "abandon impractical illusions" and warned that it would step up its troop deployment at the India-China border, if the Indian troops are not withdrawn at the earliest.
The Chinese Foreign Minister's comments were posted in Mandarin on a Chinese language website of China's Foreign Ministry.
With the India-China standoff issue taking a new course every day, the Indian Vice Chief of Army staff Lt. Gen. Sarath Chand on Tuesday said, in a report, that China would continue to remain a threat for India even in future.
Chinese Foreign Minister's first comments on standoff
While commenting for the first time on the India-China border standoff, Wang said in Bangkok that the rights and wrongs were very clear and that even senior Indian officials had stated that Chinese troops did not step into Indian territory
"To make it brief, India has admitted that they have entered Chinese territory. The solution to this issue is very simple: conscientiously withdraw," he said in a post on the Chinese website.
It was only last week that India's External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had said that the two sides should withdraw their armies and engage in a conversation.
Doval is likely to meet Chinese State Councillor Yang Jiechi, once he reaches Beijing. Although there have been no formal announcements regarding resolving the situation with bilateral talks, both the nations however still haven't ruled out a possibility for the same.
Mixed response from Chinese media
While on one hand Communist party controlled Global times branded Doval as "main schemer", a Government run china daily had reported that the two parties should find ways to avoid confrontation and settle the issue peacefully.
Taking into account the various reports made by the Indian media on this issue, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang said, "First of all, I want to point out that what Ms. Bishop said about peacefully resolving territorial disputes as a principle is true, but I must add that what she said is not applicable to what is happening in Donglang, because there is no territorial dispute there."
"The Sikkim section of the China-India boundary is long-defined, a fact recognised and maintained by the two sides for 127 years without any dispute. The nature of this incident is that Indian border troops illegally crossed the already delimited Sikkim section of the China-India boundary into Chinese territory, which is essentially different from the past frictions between the two sides in sections that are yet to be delimited," Lu said.
He added that China also wanted peace and stability at the China-India border as much as India but not at the cost of "territorial sovereignty". Moreover, the responsibility of this incident is solely on India's side, the spokesperson said.
'China will continue to remain a threat in future'
Lt. Gen. Sarath Chand, while addressing a joint seminar of the Army's Master General Ordnance and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), said that China has a large landmass, huge resources and a large standing army. Despite having Himalayas in between, China is bound to be a threat to India in the years to come.
He also spoke about China's rapid military modernisation and how large portion of Chinese defence spending still remains undisclosed.
Being the second largest economy, China is trying to keep pace with the US. China hiked its defence spending three times that of India, but the real spend is estimated to be much higher, according to The Hindu reports.
