New Delhi: After a five-year gap, India and China will hold Special Representative-level talks on Wednesday, December 18, signalling further progress in the normalisation of bilateral ties as disengagement from the military stand-off along the eastern Ladakh border has been implemented.
The Ministry of External Affairs announced on the night of December 16 that National Security Adviser Ajit Doval will hold the 23rd meeting of the special representatives with his counterpart, a member of the political bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) central committee and minister of foreign affairs of China, Wang Yi, on December 18 in Beijing.
“As agreed during the meeting of the two leaders in Kazan on 23 October 2024, the two SRs will discuss the management of peace & tranquility in the border areas and explore a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable solution to the boundary question,” said the MEA press release.
The last meeting of the SRs were held on December 21, 2019, in New Delhi.
In June 2020, a series of confrontations culminated in a fierce clash at Galwan Valley, resulting in the deaths of at least 20 Indian soldiers and four Chinese soldiers – the first fatalities along the LAC in 45 years.
Between February 2021 and September 2022, Indian and Chinese troops disengaged at the North and South Banks of the Pangong Lake, Gogra and the Hot Springs area.
On October 21 this year, India announced that a “patrolling agreement” had been finalised for the two remaining agreements at Depsang and Demchok. Two days later, prime minister Narendra Modi and Chinese president Xi Jinping held their first formal talks in five years on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia.
Since then, the foreign and defence ministers have held separate discussions.
The foreign-office led Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on India-China Border Affairs (WMCC) met on December 5 in Delhi and confirmed the completion of disengagement efforts. The meeting also prepared the ground for the special representative talks.
