External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has said that India-China relations have been in an “abnormal state” since the 2020 Galwan Valley clash and it is a “possibly longer than medium-term issue”.

“You know, one of the pleasures of dealing with China is that they never quite tell you why they do things. So you often end up trying to figure it out. And it’s always, there’s a certain ambiguity out there,” Jaishankar said.

“At various points in time, the Chinese have given us different explanations, and none of them are really tenable,” he added.

India has been consistently maintaining that the situation at the border in eastern Ladakh is not normal and that peace and tranquillity along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) were key for the normalisation of overall bilateral ties.

“It is very hard to try to be normal with a country which has broken agreements and which has done what it has done. So if you look at the last three years, it’s a very abnormal state,” the EAM said. “Contacts have been disrupted, visits are not taking place. We have of course this high level of military tension. It has also impacted the perception of China in India.”

The perception was not positive in the 1960s and 70s because of the war in 1962. “But we had started to put that behind us when this happened,” he said.

“So I think there’s both an immediate issue, as well as a medium-term issue, possibly longer than medium-term issue out there,” Jaishankar added.