India and China to Recommence Non-Stop Air Travel After Five-Year Ban

The Indian government has announced that direct flights between India and China will restart in October, marking a further move towards the gradual normalization of relations between the two countries.

Non-stop services were suspended between the two nations since 2020, following lethal border skirmishes along their shared Himalayan border.

However over the past year or so, Delhi and Beijing have been working towards mending relations, including taking actions to ease border standoffs.

On the past Thursday, India's biggest budget airline announced that it would restart non-stop services between the cities of the capital of West Bengal and Guangzhou from 26 October.

In a official communication issued on Thursday, the Indian external affairs office remarked that the restarting of air services would "further facilitate people-to-people contact" between the nations and contribute towards "gradual normalization of mutual engagements."

India and China share an ill-defined border that is more than 2,100 miles long and have conflicting land assertions.

In the year 2020, military personnel clashed at the Galwan river valley, leaving at least twenty Indian troops and four Chinese military personnel dead.

It was the earliest lethal encounter between the two sides since the mid-1970s and led to a deterioration in relations.

But over the recent months, China and India have been taking initiatives to slowly mend the frayed relationship.

High-ranking officials from the both countries have held multiple discussions and engagements.

In the previous October, India and China agreed on patrolling arrangements to de-escalate tensions along the disputed Himalayan border.

This year, the Chinese government began authorizing Indian pilgrims to visit some places of religious importance in what it calls the Tibet Autonomous Region, while India restarted visa services to Chinese tourists and agreed to resume talks to open cross-frontier commerce through designated passes.

India's strained ties with the United States over economic sanctions has also given a boost to India-China relations.

In the month of August, China's top diplomat visited Delhi, where he said that the two nations should see each other as "allies" rather than "rivals."

Subsequently in August, Beijing's envoy to New Delhi called the United States a "intimidator" for levying trade barriers on India and other countries.

In August, Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the People's Republic for the first visit since 2017 for the SCO defence summit, where he also met Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the summit, and the both leaders restated their pledge towards restoring bilateral relations.