On August 25, 2026, in Beijing, National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi held the 25th round of talks between the Special Representatives (SRs) on the India-China boundary question. That evening’s readouts from both sides were anodyne and notably avoided a phrase that has dominated this discussion for a year: early harvest . Their first task, it adds, is to agree on their own terms of reference, one year after they were constituted, suggesting that whatever is being contemplated remains at an early stage
A day later, the two sides released an “Eight Points of Outcomes and Consensus” . Point 3 restored and enhanced the phrase: the Expert Group on Boundary Delimitation and the Working Group on Border Management, set up under the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination (WMCC) a year ago, would “respectively advance discussions on an Early and Substantial Harvest of boundary delimitation and Border Management”.
This could mean that Beijing has accepted India’s terms — which this writer doubts — as that would involve China giving up its claim to approximately 2,450 square kilometres of territory in the Middle Sector, all south of the watershed boundary (Barahoti, Giu-Kaurik, Nilang-Jadhang, Sangcha Malla, and Lapthal). Yet, British Indian maps of 1907 and 1913 placed the trijunction not at Gipmochi but roughly 6.5 kilometres to its north, on the true watershed crest. A Sikkim delimitation built on the 1890 text, unless it repudiates Gipmochi, would be read by Beijing as conceding the southern trijunction. This is not hypothetical: since the 2017 Doklam standoff, China has spent years building roads, villages, and military facilities across western Bhutan, gaining de facto control over Doklam. Second, trijunction points, at Batang La and any comparable third-country-adjacent points in the Middle Sector, must be explicitly excluded from the Expert Group’s mandate and settled only in consultation with the country concerned, as stipulated in the 2012 Common Understanding between the two SRs. Third, the terms of reference for the Expert Group must extend India’s 2019 proposal in good faith, rather than dilute it beyond recognition.
Because the boundary’s four sectors are strategically interlinked, requiring cross-sector give and take, the package clause exists precisely. China rejected the proposal. The exact Indian formulation has now resurfaced in a joint document. The Sikkim Sector is also not the open-and-shut case that some suggest. However, Article I of the Convention contains two stipulations that are mutually contradictory. Its first sentence makes the watershed crest the boundary, while its second names Mount Gipmochi as the starting point on the Bhutan frontier. India and Bhutan read the watershed principle as controlling and place the trijunction at Batang La; China seizes on the literal reference to Gipmochi to push the trijunction southwards, onto the Jampheri Ridge. Even a trijunction-reserved settlement would strip India of the standing to counsel Bhutan against a bilateral deal, having itself settled out of turn nearby. First, delineation must proceed on the highest-watershed principle across the entire stretch in both sectors, rather than selectively along segments where the two positions already converge, which would serve no purpose for India. However, unless the highest-watershed principle is accepted, silence on the trijunction will, on the ground, be filled in Beijing’s favour in Bhutan.
The phrase “Early and Substantial Harvest” is significant because it is India’s own coinage. When Beijing first proposed settling the Sikkim Sector alone, India’s considered response, around 2019, was a counter-proposal on an “Early and Substantial Harvest” covering the Sikkim Sector together with the entire Middle Sector, with the boundary delineated along the watershed. In subsequent discussions on an “Early Harvest,” China reportedly agreed only to include the Sikkim Sector and some undisputed areas of the Middle Sector — a proposal that was unacceptable to India. It could equally mean something the Indian side had rejected earlier: an “agreement with holes”, a settlement nominally covering both sectors but confined to stretches where the claims already coincide, leaving the trijunctions and contested pockets of the Middle Sector undefined. If that is the case, we will have the same asymmetric outcome as with a Sikkim-only settlement — India conceding ground where its position is strong, without any progress in the Eastern and Western Sectors, where China maintains its hardline position, “dong tiao xi rang”, meaning “meaningful adjustments by India in the East and corresponding concessions by China in the West”. It would also jettison a key provision (Article III) of the 2005 Agreement on Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for the Settlement of the India-China Boundary, which calls for a “package settlement …covering all sectors of the India-China boundary”, opting instead to bank the easy gains immediately while leaving the hard issues open on China’s terms. The two sides agree that the Anglo-Chinese Convention of 1890 is the “basis of the alignment” of the boundary in this sector. China’s “package proposal” to Bhutan — relinquishing roughly 495 sq km of claims in the north in exchange for Bhutan ceding about 269 sq km in the northwest, including the Doklam Plateau — would gain fresh momentum, deepening China’s presence in the Chumbi Valley and opening a path to the Jampheri Ridge, from which the entire Siliguri Corridor, India’s sole overland link to its northeastern States, would come under direct observation. A genuine “Early and Substantial Harvest” requires three things.
Second, Indian negotiators must guard against the temptation to project contrived progress. Diplomacy that trades long-term strategic interests for short-term optics is self-defeating. Ashok K. Kantha is a former Ambassador of India to China and Subhas Chandra Bose Chair Professor of International Relations at Chanakya University, Bengaluru.
The September meeting should convey India’s concerns about the project — the world’s largest hydropower plant — being built close to the border in the Eastern Sector, in a highly earthquake-prone zone, a risk underscored by the flash floods in Nepal on August 26. ALSO WATCH 8-point India-China deal: What does it mean for India? | Worldview Two points bear reiteration. First, the 2005 agreement — the only substantive outcome of 23 years of SR talks — must not be diluted; China has sought to reinterpret and undermine it since its conclusion. He was the lead Indian negotiator for the Agreement on Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for Boundary Settlement (2005)
The Eight Points are silent on the Medog County project on the Yarlung Tsangpo River, while referring to both sides agreeing to “maintain communication on (trans-border river) issues, including hydrological data sharing and renewal of the relevant MoUs”, without reporting any progress.
Several questions about these negotiations remain unanswered. The other elements of the Eight Points — additional meeting points and hotlines for the General Level Mechanisms in the Eastern and Middle Sectors, continued pilgrimage and border trade, and a September meeting on trans-border rivers — are useful, incremental confidence-building measures. But they belong to a different track from boundary settlement and should not be conflated in public discussion.
The Chinese readout of August 25 reiterates a commitment to a “package” settlement, but how will that commitment be reconciled with a piecemeal approach to settlement? How is the setting up of an Expert Group on Delimitation consistent with the instructions given to the SRs in Article X of the 2005 Agreement, which require them to “continue consultations in an earnest manner with the objective of arriving at an agreed framework for a boundary settlement, which will provide the basis for the delineation and demarcation of the India-China boundary to be subsequently undertaken by civil and military officials and surveyors of the two sides”? There is no agreed framework yet, but it is proposed to commence the process of “delimitation”, a term that the Chinese use interchangeably with “demarcation”. Indeed, the 2005 Agreement does not use the term “delimitation” at all. Will the SRs earnestly pursue negotiations on the “agreed framework”, or will they, in effect, leave it in abeyance while officials grapple with a partial delimitation exercise without such a framework?
