NEW DELHI: National Security Adviser Ajit Doval will meet China’s state councillor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Chengdu for the 21st Special Representative talks on the border. The talks come ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s meeting on the sidelines of G20 on November 30-December 1, and just after the 9th India-China Annual Defence and Security Dialogue in Beijing on November 13.
This is the first time Wang will represent China for the talks, after replacing Yang Jiechi as foreign minister. Yang had visited Delhi for the talks in December last year soon after the Doklam standoff. Beijing put an upbeat spin to the talks, saying bilateral relations “maintained sound growth with ever deepening exchanges and cooperation in all areas,” after the Wuhan Summit between Modi and Jinping in April.
Sources in Delhi, however, seemed resigned to the fact the talks would be mostly around “border management, and not the resolution of the dispute.” But given that the dispute is unlikely to be resolved “until India forsakes its claims to Aksai Chin in Kashmir and China forsakes its claim to Arunachal Pradesh, these talks are better than fighting over the border,” said an Indian expert.