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The 25th round of talks between the Special Representatives of India and China – National Security Adviser (NSA) Ajit Doval and Foreign Minister Wang Yi – on August 25 could mark a turning point in the two countries’ efforts to resolve their boundary dispute.

An eight-point joint press release, the first in 11 years, spoke of advancing discussions “on an Early and Substantial Harvest of boundary delimitation and Border Management.” When a word like “substantial” shows up in a Sino-Indian diplomatic document, something is clearly afoot.

India and China have been trying to resolve the dispute over their 3,488 km border since the 1950s. The process has seen official-level talks, tension, and even a war. Yet they are no closer to establishing a mutually acceptable boundary. Now that tortuous process may be taking a new turn.

The history of their efforts has been long and convoluted. India initially assumed there was no dispute and that China accepted the boundaries reflected in Indian maps. But in 1959 they were disabused of this through two letters from Zhou Enlai, the first in September and the second in November, noting that the entire border was open to dispute and rejecting the McMahon Line in Arunachal Pradesh (then the North East Frontier Agency (NEFA)) as the border. He proposed both sides withdraw their armed forces 20 km from the existing line they were controlling – the Line of Actual Control – to ease tensions.

By this time, China was in de facto control of Aksai Chin. Indeed, between Zhou’s two letters came the first serious clash, on October 20, when Chinese troops ambushed an Indian police patrol at Kongka La, killing nine Indian policemen.

Tensions were already high that year because of the Tibetan uprising, which saw the Dalai Lama flee to India at the end of March 1959, where he was given asylum.

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.

Over the next two years, the two countries strengthened their border defences and drifted toward war. In April 1960, premier Zhou, accompanied by foreign minister Chen Yi, arrived in New Delhi for high-level talks. Zhou attempted to negotiate a package deal: India would accept Chinese control of Aksai Chin in exchange for China recognising NEFA as part of India in the east. The talks ended in deadlock, but the two sides did agree to have officials jointly examine the historical record and produce a report. The voluminous document was still being examined when war broke out in October 1962.

The package deal resurfaced repeatedly over the next quarter-century, and each time domestic politics or timing killed it. Deng Xiaoping raised it in Beijing in February 1979 to visiting Indian foreign minister Atal Bihari........

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