India and China have agreed to resume direct flights nearly five years after they were halted, indicating a willingness to mend ties.
Air travel between the Asian neighbours was temporarily suspended due to travel restrictions during the Covid pandemic, only to be completely halted after military clashes and a standoff along the disputed Himalayan border led to a breakdown in relations.
India’s foreign ministry said on Monday that New Delhi had reached an agreement with China "in principle to resume direct air services between the two countries”.
"The relevant technical authorities on the two sides will meet and negotiate an updated framework for this purpose at an early date,” the ministry said in a statement.
The announcement came after a top Indian diplomat visited Beijing to help thaw relations.
Confirming the new deal, the Chinese foreign ministry said the two nations had been working to improve relations since last year.
“The improvement and development of China-India relations is fully in line with the fundamental interests of the two countries,” it said.
The agreement to resume direct flights came months after India and China reached a deal on military patrols along their disputed border.
The two countries share a 3,488km border that runs from Ladakh in the west to Arunachal Pradesh in the east. China holds a big piece of territory called the Aksai Chin in Ladakh that it won during a 1962 war and claims Arunachal as part of the province of Tibet.
Ties between the neighbours hit a nadir in July 2020 after at least 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers were killed in a clash in the Galwan Valley in Ladakh. It was the first time in 45 years that a clash on the border had led to fatalities.
The clash quickly turned into a standoff, with both sides stationing thousands of soldiers backed by artillery, tanks and fighter jets along the border. The troops blocked each other from patrolling their claimed areas.
In the aftermath, India clamped down on Chinese firms, prohibiting them from investing in critical economic sectors and banning Chinese apps such as TikTok.
In October 2024, however, Beijing and New Delhi agreed on a significant military disengagement at a key border flashpoint. The deal came after a rare formal meeting between Chinese president Xi Jinping and Indian prime minister Narendra Modi during the Brics summit in Russia.
This week, Indian foreign secretary Vikram Misri met Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi and they made a slew of decisions, including the resumption of the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra, a Hindu religious pilgrimage to a sacred mountain and lake in Tibet.
The pilgrimage to the shrine of Hindu deity Krishna on Mount Kailash and the Mansarovar lake had been paused since the pandemic and remained suspended as bilateral ties deteriorated following the Galwan valley clashes.
Chinese state media confirmed the two sides had agreed to push for the resumption of the Hindu pilgrimage to the Tibet mountain and lake this year.
They had also agreed to facilitate and promote people-to-people contact, including between media and think tanks. “The two sides took stock of the extant mechanisms for functional exchanges,” the Indian foreign ministry said.
“It was agreed to resume these dialogues step by step and to utilize them to address each other’s priority areas of interest and concern. 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.”
