India-China Border Talks: Can ‘Early Harvest’ Pave the Way for a Settlement?

About 50,000 Chinese troops stand at the India-China border. The big question remains: will these troops return to their barracks?

(Photo: Kamran Akhter/The Quint)

After the meeting in Beijing on 25 August between Ajit Doval, India’s National Security Advisor, and Wang Yi, China’s Foreign Minister, India and China released eight points outlining their outcomes and areas of consensus.

Doval and Yi, the Special Representatives (SRs) of their respective countries, had met for the 25th round of SR Talks, a mechanism established in 2003 to address the India-China border dispute.

New Delhi confirmed it had joined Beijing in constituting a working group on border management and an expert group to discuss “early and substantial harvest of boundary delimitation”, and that both groups would function under the Working Mechanism for Consultation & Coordination on India–China Border Affairs (WMCC) constituted in 2012.

Both sides also noted progress on understandings reached by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping in Kazan in 2024 and Tianjin in 2025, as well as the resumption of the Kailash-Mansarovar Yatra and border trade.

Prior to these talks, Doval also met Han Zheng, Vice President of China, who called for the promotion of a stable, mutually beneficial India-China relationship. Earlier, at their first delegation-level bilateral meeting since 2019, held in Kazan on 23 October 2024, Modi and Xi agreed that boundary differences should not disturb peace and tranquillity along the border and emphasised the need for diplomatic mechanisms to stabilise relations.

The two leaders met again on the sidelines of the SCO summit in Tianjin in August 2025. In February 2026, both countries held a strategic dialogue in New Delhi. They are now expected to meet again at the SCO summit in Bishkek from 31 August to 1 September, while Xi Jinping is likely to visit India for the BRICS summit in mid-September.

The Boundary Dispute

The People’s Republic of China was founded in October 1949, and India established diplomatic relations with it in April 1950. Although the early relationship was shaped by ‘Panchsheel’ (the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence), the border was never clearly settled.

India claims that China is in illegal occupation of about 38,000 sq km of Indian territory in Aksai Chin and 5,180 sq km of the Shaksgam Valley, the latter having been ceded to China by Pakistan in 1963. China calls Arunachal Pradesh ‘Zangnan’, or South Tibet, and claims about 90,000 sq km of the territory. For analytical purposes, the border dispute is generally divided into three sectors:

1. Western Sector: In this stretch between India’s Ladakh and China’s Xinjiang, the disputed areas are in Aksai Chin, Demchok and Chumar. The dispute over Aksai Chin traces to the ‘Great Game’ between the British-Russian empires, and the British failure to clearly demarcate a legal border between China and its erstwhile Indian colony. The Johnson-Ardagh Line (1865) places Aksai Chin in J&K, while the Macartney-MacDonald Line (1893) shows it under Chinese control.

   In 1954, China protested India’s claim over Aksai Chin based on the Johnson Line, which India considers the correct interpretation based on the annexation of Kashmir and Ladakh to the Sikh kingdom (1819–1834) and the Treaty of Amritsar (1846), which transferred Kashmir to the Dogra kingdom, among other historical factors. Between 1960 and 1962, China established a new claim line—roughly corresponding to the present Line of Actual Control (LAC)—west of the Macartney-MacDonald Line. The August 2019 abrogation of Article 370 added friction. Although it did not legally cancel or alter existing bilateral border agreements with China, some of those agreements referred to the ‘state of J&K’ as bordering China.

   The 2020 Galwan Valley clash triggered a protracted military and diplomatic stand-off along the LAC, with relations improving only after the October 2024 talks. 

2. Middle Sector: There’s sparse disagreement over the border in this stretch along the watershed from Ladakh to Nepal, and covers the border between Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand on the Indian side and Tibet on the Chinese side. After the 2003–2005 diplomatic negotiations, China recognised India’s sovereignty over Sikkim in return for India recognising Tibet as part of China.

3. Eastern Sector: This stretch, from the eastern limit of Bhutan to near Talu Pass at the tri-junction of Tibet, India and Myanmar, is largely defined by the McMahon Line. In 1949–50, China renounced earlier foreign agreements as “unequal treaties imposed upon it during the century of humiliation”, rejected the McMahon Line and demanded renegotiation.

Past border resolution proposals by China had suggested a land swap, with India recognising Chinese control in western sector especially in Aksai Chin, in exchange for China recognising Indian sovereignty over Arunachal Pradesh.

China remains inflexible on parts of Aksai Chin under its occupation because the Tibet-Xinjiang/National Highway 219, which runs parallel to the LAC in several places and passes through Aksai Chin, is a key route linking Tibet with Xinjiang.

Xinjiang, China’s largest province, accounting for about 17 percent of its total landmass, holds important resources and provides access through the Karakoram Highway in PoK for its CPEC (China-Pakistan Economic Corridor) and through Central Asia for its BRI (Belt & Road Initiative).

Perhaps the trickiest issue is the Shaksgam Valley, as it’s linked to the broader India-Pakistan border dispute. Article-6 of the 1963 Pakistan-China Agreement deems Shaksgam Valley as a provisional arrangement and states that the boundary would be renegotiated once the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan is resolved.

India had rejected that agreement on grounds that Pakistan had no legal authority to cede territory belonging to the former princely state of J&K, adding that Article-6 itself is proof that Pakistan had nil sovereignty to that area. 

Conventional wisdom attributes the stalled boundary dispute largely to Beijing’s cartographic aggression and inflexibility. However, there is also a need to consider the resolutions passed by India’s Parliament, particularly the November 1962 pledge, which legally and politically binds the Indian government to its maximum territorial claims. This, in turn, limits New Delhi’s flexibility in any potential territorial exchange with China, given the likely public and political opposition.

Current Proposal

The statements released now by both nations reveal subtle differences. The Chinese statement speaks of using the SR mechanism “to seek a fair, reasonable, and mutually acceptable package of solutions to the boundary issue”.

Its subsequent release of the same day, ‘Eight Points of Outcomes and Consensus’, mentions “Early and Substantial Harvest of boundary delimitation…”. The Indian Ministry of External Affairs statement of 25 August does not mention a “package” deal, but refers to a “political settlement” of the boundary issue. Its supplementary statement of 26 August also avoids the phrase “package solution”, while highlighting that the expert group and the working group would respectively advance discussions on an “Early and Substantial Harvest” of boundary delimitation and border management.

The April 2005 ‘Agreement on Political Parameters & Guiding Principles’ had first envisaged a “package settlement” to the boundary question, stating that a boundary settlement must be final and cover all sectors of the India-China boundary. However, China has long insisted on an “early harvest” agreement—that is, resolving the dispute in the least contested sectors, such as the Middle Sector, before negotiating the more contentious stretches in the Western and Eastern sectors.

India has long opposed resolving the dispute in a piecemeal manner and rejected such Chinese proposals citing the above quoted 2005 Agreement. The 24th round of SR talks (August 2025) however saw India agreeing with China on ‘early harvest’.

Overall, India’s acceptance of China’s ‘early harvest’ approach appears strategically prudent, as peaceful border dispute resolutions often involve some degree of territorial give and take. While a ‘package’ deal had the potential to resolve the border dispute in one stroke, it would have required China to compromise on Arunachal Pradesh and India on Aksai Chin. The latter, however, would have to be viewed against the backdrop of India’s deeply polarised political environment.

Hence, this incremental approach will give time to the Indian government to educate its populace of the many strategic, technological and financial benefits which will accrue from a border settlement, and build a consensus for an honourable resolution.  

Besides, the Himalayas are a very substantial barrier to military operations, and neither military can move across to capture significant lands; what each can do is indulge in sub-sectoral combat, capture enclaves and impose severe degradation on the other. The ongoing wars (Russo-Ukraine’ Israel/USA-Iran) provide clear lessons on the futility of waging war even against technologically-inferior and/or smaller-sized adversaries. It merits noting that China has refrained from waging wars after its 1979 Vietnam debacle, and after Deng Xiaoping’s ‘Reform & Economic Opening’, has followed the economic models of post-war Germany and Japan, and not the militarised models of pre-war Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan or US.    

This push to improve ties with China, following India’s long strategic engagement with the US since the George W Bush era, is being driven largely by India’s complex supply-chain dependence on China, its need for investment and, importantly, Trump’s unpredictable hostility.

But the effort could yield significant gains.

Economically, it could facilitate substantial Chinese financial and technological investment, secure manufacturing supply chains and advance ‘Make in India’.

Strategically, it could permit military disengagement, free up resources for military modernisation and give India greater leverage in negotiations with the US.

While it may not settle the entire border issue in the immediate future, it could provide a structured mechanism for keeping the LAC and the wider border region peaceful while both sides deepen investment, trade and technological ties and work towards resolving riparian issues.

(Kuldip Singh is a retired Brigadier from the Indian Army. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)