Ajit Doval arrives in Beijing for 25th round of India-China boundary talks

National Security Advisor Ajit Doval is scheduled to arrive in Beijing on Monday for the 25th round of Special Representatives talks on the India-China boundary question.

Doval will meet his Chinese counterpart, Foreign Minister Wang Yi, on Tuesday. Both hold the SR designation established in 2003 to address the 3,488-kilometre disputed border.

The previous round took place in New Delhi in August 2025. Talks had been frozen for nearly five years after the 2020 Galwan clash and resumed in late 2024.

Officials on both sides describe the mechanism as a useful channel for managing tensions even when full resolution remains distant. An expert group has been tasked with exploring an early harvest in boundary delimitation.

The meeting comes weeks before Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to attend the BRICS summit in New Delhi on 12-13 September. That visit, if confirmed, would mark his first trip to India in several years and could include a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Recent reports have mentioned Chinese troop activity in Arunachal Pradesh. India has not issued a detailed official assessment of those claims. The talks are expected to review the situation along the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh and the eastern sector, and to discuss steps to prevent escalation.

India is also likely to raise cross-border terrorism concerns, as it did in the previous round. The outcome will be measured less by breakthrough language than by whether the two sides can maintain the disengagement arrangements reached in 2024 and keep channels open ahead of the BRICS gathering.