China claims it mediated India-Pakistan conflict in May

The conflict between India and Pakistan in May was among the contentious matters mediated by Beijing in 2025, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi claimed on Tuesday.

“This year, local wars and cross-border conflicts flared up more often than at any time since the end of WWII [World War II],” Wang said at a conference on China’s foreign relations in Beijing. “Geopolitical turbulence continued to spread.”

To build lasting peace, “we have taken an objective and just stance, and focused on addressing both symptoms and root causes”, the Chinese foreign minister added.

“Following this Chinese approach to settling hotspot issues, we mediated in northern Myanmar, the Iranian nuclear issue, the tensions between Pakistan and India, the issues between Palestine and Israel, and the recent conflict between Cambodia and Thailand,” he claimed.

Wang also said that the relations between New Delhi and Beijing had picked up “good momentum”, citing China having invited Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Tianjin in August for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs has not reacted to the claim made by Wang. But it has maintained that the ceasefire with Islamabad was not the result of mediation. The decision to stop the firing was taken after the Pakistani director-general of military operations had called his Indian counterpart, New Delhi has said.

It has repeatedly rejected claims made by United States President Donald Trump that Washington had mediated the ceasefire.

The Congress on Wednesday called China’s claims concerning and called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi to issue a clarification on the matter.

“China’s claims of mediating between India and Pakistan are concerning – not just because they contradict what has been told to the country’s people so far, but also because they appear to mock our national security,” Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said in a social media post.

Ramesh linked the matter to India’s broader relationship with China. “We have resumed talks with China – but unfortunately, these talks are taking place on China’s terms,” he said.

“Our trade deficit is at a record high, and a large portion of our exports depends on imports from China,” he added. “China’s provocative actions regarding Arunachal Pradesh continue unabated.”

“Amid such one-sided and hostile relations, India’s people deserve clarity on what role China played in suddenly stopping Operation Sindoor,” the Congress leader said.

The tensions between New Delhi and Islamabad escalated in May when the Indian military carried out strikes – codenamed Operation Sindoor – on what it claimed were terrorist camps in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

The strikes were in response to the terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam, which killed 26 persons on April 22.

The Pakistan Army retaliated to Indian strikes by repeatedly shelling Indian villages along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir.

In July, the Indian Army said that Pakistan had been receiving real-time intelligence from China about India’s important military deployments during the four-day conflict in May.

Lieutenant General Rahul R Singh, the deputy Army chief (capability development and sustenance), had said that India was effectively up against three adversaries during the conflict with Pakistan leading the front, China offering extensive support and Turkey playing an important role by providing drones “along with trained individuals who were there”.

The Indian Army said that in the last five years, 81% of the military hardware that Pakistan received was Chinese. “[China] is able to test [its] weapons against various other weapon systems that are there, so it’s like a live lab available to them,” Singh had said.

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