Pradeep Kumar Rawat appointed as next Ambassador of India to People’s Republic of China

Pradeep Kumar Rawat, presently Ambassador of India to the Kingdom of the Netherlands has been appointed as the next Ambassador of India to the People’s Republic Of China, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) informed. Since January 2021, Rawat has been functioning as the envoy to the Netherlands. 

Rawat was the joint secretary (East Asia) from 2014 to 2017 and has spent most of his diplomatic career either in China or handling Beijing from Delhi because of his fluency in Mandarin Chinese. Later from 2017 to 2020, he was posted to Indonesia as an ambassador. 

Rawat appointed as next Ambassador of India to the People’s Republic of China

Earlier in November, Rawat, Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officer of the 1990 batch was expected to take over as India’s new envoy to Beijing with the incumbent Vikram Misri returning to New Delhi as a secretary. The appointment of Rawat was made considering the serious fiction observed between India and China along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with the People's Liberation Army (PLA) ramping up military infrastructure and weaponry. 

The Narendra Modi government holds immense faith in Rawat who has a huge institutional memory of the bilateral relationship. This is very important as Beijing is known to manipulate facts as per their purpose. Pradeep Rawat has handled all the bilateral mechanisms when he worked as East Asia division head with the current external affairs minister S Jaishankar. Pradeep Kumar Rawat is well known for his calm attitude and professional demeanour.

The Galwan clash

After Beijing in May 2020, decided to unilaterally change the status quo on the north banks of Pangong Tso, the Indian Army and PLA are fully deployed along the 1597 km LAC in Ladakh. In June 2020, the Chinese aggression resulted in Galwan clash where 20 Indian Army personnel died, including Colonel Santosh Babu. India has undertaken some major developments after one year of the Galwan clash. These include building infrastructure to enhance connectivity and deploying additional troops to tackle any possible aggression by the Chinese. In the sector of troop accommodation, the biggest achievement of the defense forces has been in creating accommodation for the troops as the Military Engineers have created facilities planned to have been built in the next five years within the last 11 months.

(Image: ANI)