India and China have benefited from the peace and tranquillity witnessed along their border since the ending of a military standoff last October and made progress in various areas, National Security Adviser Ajit Doval said on Tuesday as he held talks on the boundary issue with Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi.
Doval and Wang met in New Delhi for the 24th round of talks under the Special Representatives mechanism – the highest body for dealing with the long-standing border dispute between the two sides – less than a fortnight before Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to China to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit.
Noting that there has been an “upward trend” in India-China relations in the past nine months, Doval said: “Borders have been quiet, there has been peace and tranquillity, our bilateral engagements have been more substantial.”
Doval also announced Modi will visit China for the SCO Summit, to be held in Tianjin on August 31 and September 1, and said the Special Representatives’ talks “assume a very special importance”. He credited Modi and President Xi Jinping for setting a new trend in bilateral relations at their meeting in the Russian city of Kazan last October, and said both countries had “profited a lot since then”.
{{/usCountry}}Doval also announced Modi will visit China for the SCO Summit, to be held in Tianjin on August 31 and September 1, and said the Special Representatives’ talks “assume a very special importance”. He credited Modi and President Xi Jinping for setting a new trend in bilateral relations at their meeting in the Russian city of Kazan last October, and said both countries had “profited a lot since then”.
{{/usCountry}}He added, “The new environment that has been created has helped us in moving ahead in the various areas that we were working on.”
Modi and Xi met on the margins of a multilateral event in Kazan two days after India and China reached an understanding on October 21, 2024, on ending the face-off that began in Ladakh sector of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in April-May 2020. The standoff, during which both sides amassed about 50,000 troops each on the LAC, and a brutal clash in Galwan Valley in June 2020 took bilateral ties to a six-decade low.
The two leaders had decided at their meeting to revive several mechanisms, including talks between the Special Representatives, to normalise bilateral ties and to address the border dispute.
Wang, the first Chinese minister to travel to India since the end of the face-off on the LAC, said the setbacks experienced by India and China in the past few years were not in the interests of the people of the two countries. The meeting between Modi and Xi last year “pointed the direction for the development of our bilateral relations and provided impetus for the proper settlement of the boundary question”, he said.
“We are heartened to see the stability that is now restored in the borders,” Wang said. “Now the bilateral relationship is facing an important opportunity of improvement and growth. The Chinese side attaches great importance to the Prime Minister’s visit to China to attend the SCO Summit at our invitation.”
A healthy and stable China-India relationship serves the long-term interests of both countries and is also the desire of developing countries, Wang said. The two sides should “increase mutual trust through strategic communication, expand common interest through exchanges and cooperation, and properly settle the specific issues in the borders…to advance our relationship in a healthy and sound manner”, he said.
People familiar with the matter said on condition of anonymity that confidence-building measures such as border trade and new measures to improve the management of the boundary and to prevent tensions were on the agenda for the meeting between Doval and Wang.
The two Special Representatives met even as a senior Indian government official said Wang had assured external affairs minister S Jaishankar at a meeting on Monday that China is addressing India’s concerns regarding restrictions on the export of rare earth minerals, fertilisers and large tunnel boring machines.
Wang is also scheduled to meet Modi in the evening at the conclusion of his two-day visit.