Ajit Doval heads to Beijing for crucial India-China border talks before BRICS

Ajit Doval will meet Wang Yi in Beijing for the next round of boundary talks. The engagement is a key test of whether border calm can stabilise wider India-China ties before BRICS.Image used for representational purposes onlyNational Security Advisor Ajit Doval is scheduled to arrive in Beijing on Monday for talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi under the India-China Special Representatives mechanism on the boundary issue. The 25th round of the talks is scheduled for Tuesday and comes at a time when both sides have again underlined the importance of peace along the border for the wider relationship.The meeting is also significant because it is being held ahead of the BRICS summit in New Delhi on September 12-13, which Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to attend, though there is no official confirmation yet. Officials on both sides are optimistic that Xi's participation could provide an opportunity for him to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the sidelines and discuss steps to take bilateral ties forward.Doval and Wang are the designated Special Representatives for the boundary talks mechanism, which was set up in 2003 to comprehensively address the long-running boundary dispute along the 3,488-km India-China border. Though the mechanism has not resolved the dispute, officials on both sides see it as a useful channel for dealing with recurring tensions between the two countries on different fronts.The two leaders last met in August last year on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Tianjin. Ahead of the Doval-Wang talks, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Saturday said peace and tranquillity in the border areas remains essential for stable ties with China. His remarks came amid reports of aggressive posturing by Chinese troops in Arunachal Pradesh's Upper Subansiri region in recent weeks. "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 at the Economic Times World Leaders Forum in New Delhi on Saturday. "At the end of the day, peace and tranquillity in the border areas is a prerequisite for good relations, and the state of the border, to a very large measure, naturally would determine the state of the relations," he said.On reports of increased Chinese military activity near the Arunachal Pradesh border, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said on August 12 that the China-India border situation is "generally stable at the moment". He said China and India had held the 36th meeting of the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on China-India Border Affairs. "The two sides agreed to maintain communication via diplomatic and military channels and jointly uphold peace and tranquility in the border areas", he said. External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said on August 11 that India considers matters relating to border areas with China as "most serious" and said maintaining peace and tranquillity along the Line of Actual Control is of "utmost importance", as the state of the frontier will govern the overall trajectory of bilateral ties. Earlier, New Delhi also rejected Beijing's criticism of its decision to formally identify 27 places and geographical features in Arunachal Pradesh by their standard names, saying the state is an "inalienable and integral" part of India and that nothing can change this "indisputable reality".China, which claims Arunachal Pradesh as part of South Tibet, has been issuing its own names for places in the region since 2017. India has described the Chinese move as "vain and preposterous", saying such actions will not change the "undeniable" reality that the state "was, is, and will" always remain an integral part of India. Against this backdrop, Doval's visit to Beijing and the Special Representatives talks will be closely watched as both sides prepare for the next phase of high-level engagement.With PTI Inputs- EndsPublished By: India Today Web Desk Published On: Aug 23, 2026 12:26 IST