India and China hold first Corps Commander talks in Arunachal

Indian and Chinese corps commanders sat down on Sunday at the Wacha-Damai Border Personnel Meeting point, north of Kibithu in Anjaw district. It was the first meeting at that rank on the Arunachal stretch of the Line of Actual Control. Until now the corps-level channel built after the 2020 Galwan clash had lived at Chushul-Moldo in eastern Ladakh. Lt Gen Girish Kalia, commander of 3 Corps at Rangapahar in Nagaland, led a 12-member Indian group that included an inspector-general of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police. The two armies met on the Indian side of the line.

Wacha-Damai has been an official meeting point since 2014. It had not hosted officers of this seniority. The August 25 Special Representatives talks in Beijing, between National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, had already agreed to add two corps-level points beyond Ladakh, one in the east and one in the central sector, and to open two more military hotlines. Sunday was the eastern point coming into use. No joint statement was issued. People familiar with the meeting said the brief was peace and tranquillity in the Kibithu sector.

The timing is not accidental. Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected in New Delhi for the BRICS summit on 11-13 September. The eastern LAC has been noisy in a different way from Ladakh. Reports of Chinese activity in the Taksing area of Upper Subansiri, and of local troop builds, are what Indian briefers point to when they explain why a Ladakh-only channel was no longer enough. Arunachal's LAC runs about 1,126 to 1,140 kilometres depending on the map you use. Two Indian corps share it: 3 Corps from Dimapur and 4 Corps from Tezpur. Kalia's formation holds the eastern slice that includes Anjaw.

India and China do not agree on where the line sits. Face-offs follow from that disagreement. After Galwan the two sides built a habit of putting lieutenant-generals in a room in Ladakh and writing down disengagement steps for specific ridges and valleys. Those talks produced an eight-point list at one stage, including extra meeting points and hotlines. The Arunachal meeting is the first test of whether that habit can travel east, where the dispute is older, the map disagreement is sharper, and China still prints the state as part of its territory.

Kibithu is a small garrison town. The meeting point above it is a hut and a flag arrangement, not a conference centre. That is the point. A corps commander who flies into Anjaw is telling his opposite number that the sector now has a named officer and a named table. Whether that table can absorb a patrol clash in Taksing is the open question. The last Special Representatives round, on 25 or 26 August depending on the readout, restated a political track toward a boundary settlement. The military track is what keeps the patrols from writing the politics in blood.

3 Corps also holds the approach to the Lohit and the routes that feed the eastern valleys. Adding an ITBP officer to Kalia's team was a signal that the border police, who stand on many of the actual tracks, are inside the conversation. The PLA side has not been named in the Indian accounts. That silence is normal. What would be new is a follow-up meeting on a fixed calendar, or a hotline call log that shows the eastern wire is actually in use.

Xi's arrival in Delhi will produce photographs and a BRICS communique. The photograph that matters for the LAC is the one that was not released from Wacha: two lieutenant-generals in a room that did not exist for them last year. If the next face-off in Upper Subansiri is handled on that wire instead of with fists and stones, Sunday's meeting will have done its job. If it is not, the new point will look like a protocol upgrade with no operational bite.