Directions: Read the passage given below and answer the questions by selecting the correct/most appropriate options:

The Chinese, on their part, are indicating that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has established a new normal in East Ladakh by transgression and India should move to restoring bilateral ties by accepting the new LAC. Beijing wants India and China to celebrate 70 years of establishment of bilateral ties and move to restore economic ties. That boundary dispute should be kept separate and resolution parallel to growth in economic ties has been the Chinese narrative since the days of Deng Xiaoping.

While the previous Indian regimes believed that being soft to the PLA on border was a sure recipe for a peaceful and tranquil LAC, this was taken a sign of weakness by the Beijing rulers who time and again tried to change the unresolved line from Shaksgam Valley in Karakoram to Kibithu in far east Arunachal Pradesh. Even junior diplomats from China heckled India for referring to Tibet and Xinjiang. Buddhism teacher and 14th Dalai Lama was called a terrorist by China but Pakistani Masood Azhar, a terrorist who has spilled the blood of hundreds in India, was a religious-political activist as Beijing blocked his designation as global terrorist no less than four times.

Maybe PLA expects Indian Army to accept the new normal after looking at the roadmap of New Delhi’s relations with Beijing’s iron brother Pakistan over decades, where India has always come around to the dialogue table after every crisis. Indian resilience is seen as a sign of weakness.

While India wants China to restore status quo ante of April 2020, Beijing apparently feels that the Modi government will come to terms with the new normal on LAC and revive ties in the coming months and willy-nilly accept the rise of the Middle Kingdom. After all, the so-called tiger ASEAN nations have consigned the Chinese aggression in the South China Sea to merely a talking point on bilateral agenda with Beijing. Prime Minister Narendra Modi should not even entertain such a thought.