New Delhi: A day after the Special Representatives of India and China met in Beijing, the two governments issued a joint eight-point outcome document that committed an expert group to advance discussions on an “Early and Substantial Harvest” of boundary delimitation, a formulation that had been absent from the separate readouts each side put out on the day of the talks.The release of the document on Wednesday (August 26), more than 24 hours after the talks between national security adviser Ajit Doval and Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi ended, is significant especially since India and China have not issued a joint statement at a high level for a decade.The timing is also notable, as both New Delhi and Beijing are preparing for a potential visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping to India for the BRICS summit next month. Xi is expected to attend the September 12-13 summit in New Delhi, although his visit has not yet been officially confirmed. If he travels to India, it would be his first visit to the country since his 2019 informal summit with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Mamallapuram.The joint document also marks the first time in recent rounds of the Special Representatives’ mechanism that the two sides put out a common agreed text on the boundary question, over and above their national readouts. Last year, both sides had issued similar but separate communiques on their points of consensus.The agreed common text, in fact, covers ground that Monday’s readouts hadn’t even mentioned.The joint document, published separately by the foreign ministries of India and China on Wednesday, stated that an ‘Expert Group on Boundary Delimitation’ and a ‘Working Group on Border Management’ under the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on India-China Border Affairs (WMCC) will “respectively advance discussions on an Early and Substantial Harvest of boundary delimitation and Border Management”.It adds that the first task of both groups will be to agree on their respective terms of reference.The formulation is significant because the “early harvest” proposal had previously been a contentious element of the boundary negotiations.At the 24th round of Special Representatives’ talks in August 2025, the two sides had agreed to explore an “early harvest” in boundary delimitation, after China had for years advocated a sector-by-sector approach to resolving the dispute.The Special Representatives’ mechanism itself was created in 2003 to work towards a political framework for a boundary settlement, and the two sides reached the 2005 Agreement on Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for Settlement of the boundary question. The 2005 agreement envisaged a package settlement covering the boundary as a whole, rather than a phased settlement of individual sectors.China had previously proposed an “early harvest” approach centred on the Sikkim sector. The concept is essentially to settle portions of the boundary where the two sides may be closer to an agreement before attempting to resolve the entire disputed frontier.This time, the phrase has been expanded to “early and substantial harvest”. That change is potentially significant, but there is no clear definition of the term or any indication of which stretches of the boundary are involved.At the same time, the joint statement also retains the broader objective of an overall settlement, saying the two sides will advance negotiations on a framework for resolving the boundary question in accordance with the 2005 agreement and the consensus reached in subsequent Special Representatives’ talks, in pursuit of a “fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable solution”.The stronger language on delimitation was not apparent when the two sides first described Tuesday’s meeting.An Indian embassy post on X had also said the two sides discussed ways to make progress on boundary delimitation, but that formulation was not included in the Ministry of External Affairs’ press release, which only stated that the two countries agreed to work towards a “political settlement” of the boundary question.The Chinese readout, by contrast, said the two sides had held “in-depth discussions on advancing boundary delimitation negotiations” and reiterated their commitment to seeking a “fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable package solution” under the 2005 political parameters and guiding principles.The new joint document now puts the delimitation track explicitly into the agreed outcomes of the talks.India and China are in the midst of gradually rebuilding ties following the four-year military standoff along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) triggered by the 2020 clashes in eastern Ladakh. The October 2024 disengagement understanding was followed by Modi and Xi’s meeting in Kazan in October 2024, after which diplomatic and people-to-people exchanges began to resume steadily.The eight points also contain several measures aimed at improving management of the LAC and preventing escalation of local incidents.India and China agreed that “any situation on the ground would be addressed promptly” through existing diplomatic and military channels, including the WMCC, local commander-level meetings and other agreed mechanisms, to resolve outstanding issues and avoid “misunderstanding and miscalculation” along the LAC.They also discussed ways to improve their “understanding” of the LAC in “appropriate areas” for better border management. The two countries have also never formally defined their roughly 3,500-km boundary, and the LAC is an approximation of where each side’s effective – or perceived – control lies rather than an agreed line.After map exchanges took place in the central sector, efforts to extend the process to the more sensitive western and eastern sectors broke down in 2002-2003. No further official exchange of maps has happened since.As per the eight-point consensus, the two sides also agreed to add two meeting points for general-level mechanism/senior highest military commander meetings and two additional channels for border military hotlines in the eastern and middle sectors.These measures build on the border-management mechanisms agreed at the 24th round last year, when the two sides agreed to create general-level mechanisms in the eastern and middle sectors in addition to the existing mechanism in the western sector, and to establish a working group on border management.The latest document also records progress in restoring cross-border exchanges. Both sides welcomed the reopening of the three designated border trading points and agreed to strengthen exchanges and cooperation in border trade, pilgrimage and other areas. India also “appreciated” China’s efforts to increase the number of batches of Indian pilgrims travelling on the Kailash Manasarovar Yatra in Tibet.The two sides agreed to hold the next meeting of their Expert-Level Mechanism on Trans-border Rivers in September and maintain communication on hydrological data-sharing and renewal of the relevant memoranda of understanding.The issue has assumed importance due to heightened Indian concern over China’s construction of a mega hydropower project on the lower reaches of the Yarlung Tsangpo river in Tibet, which becomes the Brahmaputra after entering India. China has said the project, formally launched in 2025, will have a planned capacity of about 60 gigawatts and generate nearly 300 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually.