India-China standoff: Forces on almost war-like alert along LAC, ready to ‘impose costs’ on China

The last major dispute between New Delhi and Beijing was in 2017 on the remote Doklam plateau near the borders of India, Bhutan, and China. After a tense standoff, both sides agreed to an "expeditious disengagement" of troops, according to India's foreign ministry.

Twenty Indian Army personnel including a colonel were killed in a fierce clash with the Chinese troops in the Galwan Valley in eastern Ladakh on Monday night, the biggest military confrontation in over five decades that has significantly escalated the already volatile border standoff in the region.

In the last six years, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and China President Xi Jinping have had 18 one-on-one meetings.

Most of them were described as cordial. 

Modi has visited China nine times -- five as the prime minister and four times as the chief minister of Gujarat.