India, China Edge Toward Normalcy as Border Diplomacy Resumes in New Delhi
New Delhi: India and China took another incremental step toward stabilising their fraught border relationship on Thursday, as senior diplomats from both sides met in New Delhi for the 36th round of talks under the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on India-China Border Affairs (WMCC), reaffirming their commitment to peace along the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
The meeting, held on August 6, brought together Joint Secretary (East Asia) Sujit Ghosh for India and Hou Yanqi, Director General of China’s Boundary and Oceanic Affairs Department, for the Chinese side. Officials described the discussions as “frank,” with both sides underscoring that tranquillity along the disputed frontier remains a prerequisite for deeper bilateral engagement — a message that has become something of a diplomatic refrain in recent years, but one that carries added weight given the trajectory of ties since the 2020 Ladakh standoff.
Rather than breaking new ground, Thursday’s talks appeared designed to consolidate existing channels of communication. The two sides agreed to keep using the WMCC alongside military commander-level meetings and other established mechanisms to manage the border and head off the kind of misunderstandings that have historically escalated tensions.
The meeting builds on momentum from the 24th round of Special Representatives talks held in New Delhi last August, where National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and China’s Wang Yi discussed setting up an expert group on boundary delimitation, a working group on border management, and expanded sectoral cooperation — along with more contentious subjects like trans-border rivers and the reopening of traditional trade routes. Notably, both governments have already agreed the next round of Special Representatives talks will be hosted in China sometime in 2026, suggesting a degree of continuity in the process despite its slow pace.
This latest round of diplomacy unfolds against a backdrop of cautious thaw. Since troops disengaged in eastern Ladakh, the border has remained largely calm, opening room for Delhi and Beijing to revive broader people-to-people and institutional ties. The turning point, many officials point out, was the October 2024 meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Kazan summit in Russia — an encounter that effectively unlocked a series of confidence-building steps since.
Among them: the resumption of the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra, the restoration of direct flights between cities in both countries, and eased visa norms for travellers on both the sides.
Yet for all the diplomatic thaw, the core issue — the unresolved boundary dispute itself — remains untouched. India’s approach continues to be marked by deliberate caution, officials say, with New Delhi wary of any repeat of the 2020 Galwan clash that plunged relations to their lowest point in decades. That wariness, more than any single agreement, continues to shape the pace at which the two Asian giants are willing to move.