India’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval held the 25th round of Special Representative (SR) talks with his counterpart, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi, in Beijing last week. The talks came about a month before the BRICS summit, which Chinese President Xi Jinping is scheduled to attend, though confirmation is yet to be received. Meanwhile an advance delegation from China is in New Delhi, working on hotel arrangements and security protocol for Xi. This will be Xi’s first visit post the Galwan clash. He had last visited India in 2019. The SR talks were held shortly after India released its own list of names for places in Arunachal Pradesh, to which China objected.

It does appear that the Chinese tended to downplay the impact of the Indian action, though aware that it challenges their claims on Arunachal and could spread to other sectors. It also appears that the two sides are attempting to stabilize ties, despite differences over border alignment and regional security. It was for this reason that the word ‘delimitation’ was used in the joint statement, issued 24 hours after the meeting. The terms in use earlier were border management or disengagement. These implied short-term management, but delimitation indicates the intent to move towards a permanent settlement.

The meeting led to the issuance of ‘eight points of outcomes and consensus.’ Amongst the eight, a few are significant. The first is continuing discussions on “Early and Substantial Harvest of boundary delimitation and Border Management.’ This implies resolving border issues region by region, rather than as a whole. Maps had been exchanged on the Middle Sector, but further movement was stalled. India had for long been against partial border settlement but appears to have accepted this approach. This was first discussed positively by the two sides at a similar meeting in August last year.

It also added that an Expert Group on Boundary Delimitation and a Working Group on Border Management will have to first agree on respective terms of........

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