Ajit Doval heads to Beijing, boundary talks with Wang Yi tomorrow

Ajit Doval heads to Beijing, boundary discussions with Wang Yi tomorrow NSA Ajit Doval visit comes ahead of BRICS summit in Delhi next month.

Key points

• 4 min read New Delhi Aug 24, 2026 05: 20 AM IST.
• This was reiterated at a session of the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on India-China Border Affairs (WMCC).
• After he met Wang in New Delhi last year, Doval remarked the India-China border had been "quiet" and there had been an "upward trend" in bilateral ties.
• National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi.
• The two countries have been moving to repair ties that plummeted after the military standoff along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh.

National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi. (File Photo).

Ahead of a feasible visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping to India for the summit of the BRICS leaders next month, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval is travelling to Beijing Monday for Special Representative-level negotiations on the boundary matter with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi.

Notably, the 25th round of SR-level discussions will be held Tuesday. Both Doval and Wang are the designated SRs for the boundary discussions mechanism which was established in 2003 to comprehensively address the longstanding boundary dispute between the two countries.

In the last week of June, Wang visited India for a session of the BRICS NSAs and met Doval on the sidelines. Wang, who is additionally China's Foreign Minister, underlined it is "imperative" for India and China to respect each other's "core interests" and take concrete actions to implement the "important consensus" reached by both sides.

For context, the two countries have been moving to repair ties that plummeted after the military standoff along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh. Since late 2024, both sides have taken steps to ease tensions.

Earlier this month, responding to a question on reports of some tension along the LAC, the Ministry of External Affairs remarked the state of the border with China will reflect on the state of the "larger bilateral ties" and that maintenance of peace and tranquillity along the LAC is of "utmost importance".

Randhir Jaiswal, spokesperson for the MEA, additionally rejected China's criticism of New Delhi identifying 27 places and features in Arunachal Pradesh by their standard names, maintaining that the state is an "inalienable and integral" part of India and nothing can change this "indisputable reality".

This was reiterated at a session of the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on India-China Border Affairs (WMCC). "At this meeting, the two sides engaged in frank discussions and reviewed the situation along the LAC, " Jaiswal remarked.

On Saturday, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, speaking on the situation with China, remarked: "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."

"At the end of the day, peace and tranquility in the border areas is a prerequisite for good relations, and the state of the border, to a particularly substantial measure, naturally would determine the state of the relations. Having remarked that, I think naturally, if assuming things are stable and the needle is more cooperative, obviously, I mean we are both highly major economies. In plenty of ways, we are markets to each other. We are part of the supply chain. They industrialised much faster and much bigger and much earlier, largely since of numerous of the policies we advocate, " he noted.

"The world is competitive. We must build up our strengths. We have to do business with the entire world. That includes China too, but it is significant we agreement with them confidently. As we have stood on the border, we stand our ground. We develop our strengths, which unfortunately from the 1960s for half a century, we did not do. We have to create up for the shortcomings and the mistakes of the past, and that is really what we are hoping to do. So I think a stronger, more self-reliant India, a more industrialised India, a more manufacturing India will be able to actually compete with China as it will with other major countries of the world, " he remarked.

Jaishankar remarked the administration had "taken up" with China the difficulty of business visas being faced by Indian applicants.

In short, ajit Doval heads to Beijing, boundary talks with Wang Yi tomorrow is the central thread here, and readers can expect follow-up reporting as the picture becomes clearer.