The 25th round of the China–India Special Representatives’ talks on the boundary question, held in Beijing on 25 August 2026 between India’s National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, was less about an immediate breakthrough than about the evolving architecture of bilateral relations, Sunday Guardian
reported.
Xinhua described the discussions as “comprehensive, in-depth, friendly, and candid.”
Wang Yi stressed the strategic direction set by President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Narendra Modi during their meetings in Kazan in 2024 and Tianjin in 2025. He urged both countries to adopt a strategic and long-term perspective, to become friendly neighbours and partners that help each other succeed, and to realise what he called “the dragon and the elephant tango.”
He also emphasised the need to draw lessons from history, to place the boundary question in an appropriate position, and to move forward without stagnation, regression, or deviation from the right course.
Ajit Doval’s approach was pragmatic. He called for stronger strategic communication, mutually beneficial cooperation, multilateral coordination, effective border management, exploration of solutions to the boundary question, and further improvement of bilateral relations.
Both sides reaffirmed the objective of a fair, reasonable, and mutually acceptable package settlement while simultaneously emphasising border management, institutional mechanisms, and cross-border cooperation. This distinction reflects the recognition that the strategic environment along the Line of Actual Control has changed fundamentally.
Infrastructure, logistics, surveillance, and military mobility have been dramatically improved by both countries. The LAC is now more accessible to military forces but also more susceptible to rapid escalation.
The Galwan clash of 2020 demonstrated the risks. Although disengagement and diplomatic mechanisms reduced immediate tensions, a return to the pre-2020 environment is unlikely. What has emerged instead is a new modus vivendi: no major de-escalation but effective border management and diversification of ties.
Three developments stood out in the 26 August statement. Expert and Working Groups were created to advance boundary delimitation and border management, with an “early and substantial harvest” as an objective.
Military communication mechanisms were strengthened, including two new meeting points in the Central and Eastern Sectors and two additional border hotlines.
Trans-border cooperation was expanded, including the Kailash-Mansarovar Yatra, reopening of three border trading points, and renewed engagement on trans-border rivers. The idea of a package settlement has also returned since the 24th meeting of the SRs.
The package settlement, often described as an “east-west swap,” remains relevant though not agreed. Its logic is that a final settlement must accommodate present jurisdiction and control rather than reproduce maximalist historical claims.
Yet both countries have taken maximalist approaches—China’s toponymic expansion in Arunachal between 2017 and 2025, and India’s claim of the entire Aksai Chin and territories China holds in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. The political difficulty is clear: territorial sovereignty has acquired enormous symbolic value, making compromise hard to present domestically as anything other than a concession.
The Shanghai Institute for International Studies report of July 2026, “India’s Propaganda Warfare Against China: Historical Roots and Contemporary Evolution,” led by Liu Zongyi, reveals the depth of Chinese strategic distrust of India.
It portrays India’s China policy as broad propaganda warfare involving government institutions, political parties, think-tanks, media, and academia. Narratives concerning the border, China’s economic rise, water resources, Tibet, and religious-cultural issues are seen as interconnected components of a larger strategic discourse.
On the boundary question, the report identifies recurring Indian narratives: selective use of colonial sources, transformation of disputed areas into supposedly undisputed territory, elevation of questionable records into sovereignty evidence, and attribution of border clashes to Chinese betrayal.
The Galwan episode is interpreted as India portraying China as the initiator and India as the victim, followed by a narrative of Indian victory.
The report extends beyond the border. It identifies narratives portraying China’s development as a gift from the U.S., predictions of China’s economic collapse, and the prospect of India replacing China.
It interprets the debt trap and String of Pearls narratives as attempts to securitise China’s economic presence in South Asia and the Indian Ocean. At the deepest level, these patterns are attributed to colonial legacies, nationalist politics, and a geopolitical imagination inherited from British India.
As an account of Chinese perceptions, the report is revealing. It shows distrust extending beyond the LAC to India’s economic policies, strategic partnerships, international communication, and domestic discourse. It also highlights how narratives can become institutionalised and influence policy even when contested. Yet Liu’s narrative has limitations.
It presents contested interpretations as settled facts and uses strongly normative language such as propaganda warfare, false narratives, colonial mentality, and jealousy and hatred. It risks reproducing the same narrative closure it attributes to India.
The report demonstrates how deeply distrust has become embedded in Chinese perceptions of India. Its value lies in exposing the cognitive environment within which Chinese policy is formulated. Its weakness lies in reproducing binary logic. The same caution applies to Indian narratives about China.
The strategic task for both countries is not merely to defeat the other’s narrative but to prevent competing narratives from closing the political space necessary for negotiation.
The 25th SRs meeting gains added significance as it precedes President Xi Jinping’s anticipated visit to New Delhi for the 2026 BRICS Summit on 12–13 September.
The summit provides a wider diplomatic theatre to translate the current thaw into broader strategic cooperation.
The talks offer a modest but consequential opening. If border management stabilises the LAC, bilateral economic relations diversify, and BRICS provides a platform for practical cooperation, India and China may move from managed distrust towards strategic accommodation.
The opportunity presented by the 2026–27 BRICS presidencies makes this task urgent. Success will depend not on rhetoric alone but on whether Beijing and New Delhi can convert strategic communication into institutionalised cooperation and institutionalised cooperation into strategic trust.
Agencies
