Indian NSA Doval to meet Chinese counterpart in Beijing: Border issue ahead of Xi Jinping visit to be discussed
&imwidth=600&imheight=450&format=webp&quality=medium "Indian NSA Doval to meet Chinese counterpart in Beijing: Border issue ahead of Xi Jinping visit to be discussed")
NSA Ajit Doval is expected to visit China Photograph: (ANI)
NSA Ajit Doval is expected to visit China for the 25th round of India-China Special Representatives’ talks with Wang Yi on the boundary dispute. The discussions come ahead of Xi Jinping’s expected India visit for the BRICS Summit
National Security Adviser (NSA) Ajit Doval is expected to visit China on Monday (Aug 24) for a meeting of the Special Representatives on the boundary issue, and will meet his counterpart for the Special Representatives mechanism, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi. It is part of efforts by the two sides to normalise ties. This will be the 25th round of talks under the mechanism, established in 2003 to work out a framework for resolving the dispute over the 3,488-km border. Doval’s visit assumes comes weeks ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s expected trip to India next month to participate in the BRICS Summit in New Delhi. This will be Xi’s first visit to India in seven years. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Xi last met in August 2025 on the margins of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Summit in China.
Talks against recent Arunachal Pradesh standoff
The visit of Doval comes amid reported clash of Indian and Chinese troops in the Arunachal Pradesh sector of the Line of Actual Control (LAC). External affairs minister S Jaishankar recently said that the state of the border will determine the course of the overall India-China relationship. “I think we went through a particularly bad patch between the summer of 2020 and the autumn of 2024, and that was primarily an outcome of the situation in the border areas,” Jaishankar said, referring to a military face-off in the Ladakh sector of the LAC that lasted more than four years and took bilateral ties to a six-decade low. After the two sides reached an understanding on ending the face-off in Ladakh in October 2024, Xi and Modi met in Russia and agreed on measures to normalise ties and address the border dispute. Steps were taken to revive the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra, direct flights and ease of visa restrictions for Chinese nationals
Last round of Special Representatives' talk
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At the last round of Special Representatives’ talks in New Delhi a year ago, the two sides reiterated the “importance of maintaining peace and tranquillity” on the border to promote the overall development of ties. According to an Indian readout issued at the time, the Special Representatives agreed on the need for a “political perspective” while working on a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable framework for settling the boundary question in line with the Agreement on Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for Settlement of the India-China Boundary Question of 2005. They also agreed to set up an expert group under the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination (WMCC) on India-China Border Affairs to “explore early harvest in boundary delimitation”, and a working group under the WMCC to advance effective border management. They further agreed to create general-level mechanisms in the eastern and middle sectors of the border, in addition to the existing general-level mechanism in the western sector.
