For 24 hours, India and China did what they do best — spoke separately.

On the evening of August 25, after NSA Ajit Doval met Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Beijing for the 25th Round of Special Representatives (SR) talks, the Indian Embassy posted on X that both sides had “reviewed bilateral ties and discussed ways to further expand cooperation and maintain stability.” Beijing’s version was warmer: Wang Yi and Doval had “comprehensive, in-depth, friendly and candid” discussions and China-India ties now had “global and strategic significance.”

But the absence of a joint statement led to speculation that semantic consensus on how to frame contentious issues remained elusive. However, on August 26, an identical eight-point joint consensus was released, first by New Delhi and later by Beijing. The latest statement included a push for an ‘Early and Substantial Harvest’ on boundary delimitation, two new military meeting points, two new border hotlines in the Eastern and Middle sectors, an Expert-Level Mechanism on trans-border rivers in September, facilitation of Kailash-Mansarovar Yatra, resumption of border trade and the next SR round in India in........

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