INDIA, CHINA COMMANDERS MEET TO EASE TENSIONS AFTER DEADLY CLASH

Indian and Chinese military commanders met on Monday to try to ease tensions at their disputed Himalayan border as the public mood hardened in India for a military and economic riposte following the worst clash in more than five decades, Sanjeev Miglani and Devjyot Ghoshal reported for Reuters late on June 22, 2020.

Major Indian traders called for a boycott of Chinese goods and the state of Maharashtra, home to India's financial capital of Mumbai, put three initial investment proposals from Chinese companies worth 50 billion rupees ($658 million) on hold, just days after signing the agreements.

An Indian government source said commanders met in Moldo, on the Chinese side of the Line of Actual Control, the de facto border dividing India's Ladakh region from the Chinese held Aksai Chin. The meeting lasted several hours, with the Indian side pushing China to withdraw its troops back to where they were in April, a second Indian government source said. In previous rounds of talks, China had asked India to stop all construction work in what it says is Chinese territory.

China is India's second-biggest trading partner, with bilateral trade worth $87 billion in the fiscal year ending March 2019, and a trade deficit of $53.57 billion in China’s favor, the widest India has with any country. China’s GDP is five times that of India and its military spending is three times bigger than India’s, bragged Hu Xijin, the editor-in-chief of Global Times, which is published by the People's Daily, the official newspaper of China's ruling Communist Party.