The 1996 Agreement on Confidence-Building Measures (CBMs) is a bilateral international treaty between India and China, formally titled the Agreement on Confidence-Building Measures in the Military Field along the Line of Actual Control in the India-China Border Areas. It was signed on November 29, 1996, during Chinese President Jiang Zemin's visit to India, as a follow-up to the 1993 Agreement on the Maintenance of Peace and Tranquility along the LAC. The agreement's purpose was to reduce the risk of armed conflict, prevent the escalation of local incidents, and enhance transparency and restraint in military activities along the disputed Line of Actual Control (LAC).
The agreement, which contains twelve articles, works by imposing specific military restrictions and establishing communication mechanisms. Key provisions include a commitment to progressively reduce military deployments along the LAC to a minimum level based on the principle of mutual and equal security. It explicitly limits large-scale military exercises near the LAC to less than one Division (approximately 15,000 troops) and bars combat aircraft and helicopters from flying within 10 km of the line. Furthermore, Article 10 committed both sides to exchange maps to clarify the alignment of the LAC.
This agreement is the core of the Sino-Indian CBM architecture and connects directly to the 1993 Border Peace and Tranquillity Agreement. It was further built upon by the 2005 Protocol on Modalities for the Implementation of Confidence Building Measures and the 2013 Border Defence Cooperation Agreement (BDCA). While the agreement has not been replaced, its limits were severely tested in 2020, with India arguing that China's troop concentration in Eastern Ladakh violated the spirit and letter of the 1993 and 1996 agreements.