New Delhi: A year after the Special Representatives of India and China agreed to explore an “early harvest” in boundary delimitation, the two sides have dropped that formulation in the outcome of their latest talks, instead reaffirming their commitment to a broader political settlement of the boundary dispute.The 25th round of the Special Representatives’ talks was held in Beijing on Tuesday (August 25), with national security adviser Ajit Doval and Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi holding a “candid and in-depth” discussion on the boundary question, bilateral ties and regional and international issues, as per the readout of both countries.Ahead of the meeting, Doval also called on Chinese vice president Han Zheng.Tuesday’s meeting was the third round of Special Representatives’ talks since India and China ended their military standoff in eastern Ladakh in October 2024, which had frozen diplomatic and political ties between the two Asian giants for four years.While the Indian readout said the two sides agreed to continue working towards a “political settlement”, China said they would advance boundary delimitation negotiations while seeking a “fair and reasonable, mutually acceptable package settlement”, in accordance with the political parameters agreed in 2005.The Chinese language readout explicitly mentioned that boundary delimitation was on the agenda, even though neither side repeated the “early harvest” formulation that featured in their previous Special Representatives’ meeting in August 2025.Incidentally, a tweet from the Indian embassy in Beijing said both sides had “discussed ways to … make progress on boundary delimitation”, but there was no mention of this in the official Indian readout.At last year’s meeting, India and China had agreed to set up an expert group under the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on India-China Border Affairs (WMCC) to explore an “early harvest” in boundary delimitation. China described the understanding as an agreement to explore advancing delimitation negotiations in areas “where conditions are ripe”.After the last two WMCC meetings held in May and August, boundary delimitation continued to feature in the readouts, even as the “early harvest” phrase has disappeared from the public accounts. It is unclear if the working group was established.The “early harvest” idea had been publicly raised by China in 2017 and was understood to involve settling portions of the boundary where agreement could be reached more easily before a comprehensive settlement of the entire dispute. It had particular strategic implications for India because of the possibility of a separate settlement in the Sikkim sector and its implications for the India-China-Bhutan trijunction.The resurfacing of the ‘early harvest’ formula had raised eyebrows as India had for years resisted China’s call for a piecemeal approach to resolving the boundary dispute, maintaining that the question should be settled through an overall framework under the 2005 Agreement on Political Parameters and Guiding Principles.In his public remarks, Doval linked the timing of the talks to the BRICS summit that India is hosting. “I am very happy also to be here for the 25th round of our talks, which are very important, particularly in the [run-up to] the BRICS summit that is likely to take place shortly”.There has been no announcement from either government on whether Chinese President Xi Jinping will travel to India for the summit, but Doval’s mention of the BRICS summit is likely a hint that he will be visiting Delhi.A visit by Xi would be his first to India since his informal summit with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Mamallapuram in 2019.Doval also said the improvement in ties flowed directly from calm on the border.“I am happy that over the past year our relationship has been steadily returning to normalcy,” he said. “The normalcy we have witnessed in our relationship has been a direct result of both sides maintaining peace and tranquility in the border areas. We have extensively talked about it today just to see how we can continue to reinforce and further consolidate our efforts to maintain peace and tranquillity in border areas.”According to the Chinese readout, Doval also said India and China were “partners in cooperation rather than competitors”, and that a “stable, predictable and forward-looking” relationship was in the interests of both countries in addition to being important for Asia and the world.Wang, meanwhile, said that healthy and stable relations served the fundamental interests of both peoples, the common aspirations of countries of the Global South and the broader trend of the times.He said China-India relations had “already gone beyond the bilateral scope” and had global and strategic significance.China was willing to work with India to “grasp the direction of bilateral relations from a strategic height and a long-term perspective”, strengthen communication, enhance mutual understanding, eliminate differences and overcome obstacles, Wang said.He called on the two countries to become “friends of good-neighbourliness” and “partners who help each other succeed”, and work towards a “dragon-elephant dance”.The two sides also noted progress in restoring wider exchanges. The Indian readout said they expressed satisfaction at the steady resumption of people-to-people and cross-border exchanges, including the ongoing Kailash Mansarovar Yatra and border trade through the three designated trading passes.