New Delhi: India and China have started translating last year’s political understanding on an “early harvest” approach to boundary delimitation into official discussions and agreed to make “substantive” preparations for the next round of Special Representatives talks at a foreign office-led border affairs meeting in Beijing on Wednesday (May 27).According to the Indian readout issued on Thursday, the two sides discussed “issues pertaining to delimitation, border management, mechanism building and cross-border cooperation” and agreed to work together to make “substantive preparation” for the next meeting of the Special Representatives, which will be held in China.The meeting was led on the Indian side by Sujit Ghosh, joint secretary for East Asia in the external affairs ministry, and by Hou Yanqi, director general of the boundary and oceanic affairs department of the Chinese foreign ministry.The Indian statement said the discussions were “constructive and forward looking”, while the Chinese foreign ministry said they took place in a “practical and friendly atmosphere”.Both sides also stressed that the border situation had remained stable. The Indian side said the two countries had reviewed the situation in the border areas and expressed satisfaction with the progress in maintaining “peace and tranquillity”, which had enabled “gradual normalisation of bilateral relations”. The Chinese statement similarly said the border areas had maintained “lasting peace and tranquillity”.The reference to “delimitation” is significant because it suggests that the two sides have now begun discussions linked to the “early harvest” formulation agreed during the 24th round of Special Representatives talks in New Delhi in August 2025.At that meeting, India had announced the setting up of an expert group under the WMCC “to explore early harvest in boundary delimitation in the India-China border areas”. China’s formulation at the time was slightly different, saying the two sides would “explore the advancement of delimitation negotiations in areas where conditions are ripe”.As The Wire had noted, the idea of an “early harvest” had first surfaced publicly in 2017 when then Chinese ambassador Luo Zhaohui proposed that the Sikkim sector of the boundary could be settled separately from the larger unresolved dispute. India had historically resisted such a segmented model, arguing that the boundary question had to be resolved as a comprehensive package in line with the 2005 Agreement on Political Parameters and Guiding Principles.Jabin T. Jacob, director of the Centre for Himalayan Studies at Shiv Nadar University and current visiting scholar at the National Chung Hsing University in Taiwan, said the renewed emphasis on delimitation appeared aimed at moving past the unresolved legacy of the 2020 military standoff. “Both sides have jumped on to delimitation as a way of getting past the problem of not returning to status quo ante the Chinese transgressions of 2020,” he told The Wire.He argued that despite the restoration of patrolling arrangements at some friction points, the military build-up along the Line of Actual Control remained unaddressed.“Only disengagement of troops has happened – and even this involves the creation of the so-called buffer zones with limitations on patrolling by troops – not de-escalation and de-induction of troops. So it seems that it is to escape criticism for this lack of progress that both sides have now been talking of delimitation. But this is just a discussion – we do not know what stage it is at.”Jacob also questioned whether there were any signs that Beijing was prepared to make broader concessions on the boundary issue.“What is it that is happening right now that gives anybody the confidence that China will give way on the boundary dispute? Going by the record since 2020, not only have they refused to return to status quo ante, they have widened the targeting of India to the economic realm too, with export control measures and trying to make life difficult for Indian industry. You can’t square the circle,” he said.The Indian readout for latest round of border talks noted that India pressed for an early meeting of the Expert Level Mechanism on Trans-border Rivers, an issue that has become increasingly important amid concerns over hydrological data sharing and upstream Chinese infrastructure activity.The Chinese readout referred to “cross-border communication and cooperation” echoing Indian language, but did not mention trans-border rivers.Jacob noted the trans-border rivers issue could serve as a test of Beijing’s willingness to accommodate Indian concerns even in less contentious areas, describing it as a relatively straightforward matter of restoring existing data-sharing arrangements.“If the Chinese are not going to give way on this – and this has appeared in every Indian statement since ties began to be ‘normalised’ – I very much doubt that they will give way on something as big as delimitation, which would indicate progress towards the resolution of the boundary dispute,” he stated.The WMCC was established in 2012 as a diplomatic mechanism to manage border affairs and coordinate between the two sides on maintaining stability along the Line of Actual Control. After the deadly clash at Galwan Valley in June 2020, which killed 20 Indian soldiers and led to a military confrontation across multiple friction points in eastern Ladakh, the mechanism was also involved in efforts to begin disengagement.In October 2024, the two sides agreed to resolve the stand-off in eastern Ladakh with a patrolling agreement. Days later, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping held their first bilateral meeting in five years at Kazan, reviving the SR dialogue and setting in motion a normalisation that has since included the resumption of direct flights, easing of visas, revival of the Kailash-Mansarovar Yatra and Modi’s visit to Tianjin for the SCO summit in August 2025, his first trip to China in seven years.