(TibetanReview.net, Aug07’26) – Ahead of President Xi Jinping’s expected visit to India in September for the BRICS summit, India and China have held their 36th meeting of the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination (WMCC) on India‑China Border Affairs in New Delhi on Aug 6. And they have underlined that maintaining peace and tranquillity along their disputed Tibet frontier is essential for overall development of relations between them.
India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said in a statement Aug 7 that the two sides exchanged views on boundary delimitation, border management, mechanism-building, and trans-border cooperation.
“The two sides engaged in frank discussions and reviewed the situation along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). Further, it was underlined that maintaining peace and tranquillity in the border areas is essential for the overall development of bilateral relations,” the MEA said.
India has stressed the need for an early convening of the next meeting of the Expert Level Mechanism on trans-border rivers and emphasised the importance of sharing technical details relating to upstream projects, the MEA readout said.
The Indian delegation was led by Sujit Ghosh, Joint Secretary (East Asia) in the MEA, and the Chinese delegation by Hou Yanqi, Director General of the Boundary and Oceanic Affairs Department of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“Both sides agreed to continue to use 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,” the MEA statement added.
On its side, China’s Foreign Ministry said the much the same thing in a brief statement Aug 7: that the two sides exchanged views on issues including boundary delineation, border management and control, mechanism building, and cross-border cooperation.
Both sides agreed to maintain communication through diplomatic and military channels and work together to safeguard peace and tranquillity in the border areas, China’s official globaltimes.cn Aug 7 cited the Chinese Foreign Ministry as saying.
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The WMCC meeting followed the 24th round of Special Representative (SR)-level talks held last year. This dialogue is led by India’s National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. At their meeting in Aug 2025, the two sides decided to establish at least three groups to address border-related issues:
- An expert group under the WMCC framework to explore the early delimitation of the boundary in appropriate sectors.
- A working group under the WMCC framework to advance effective border management and maintain peace and tranquillity in border areas.
- General-level mechanisms in the Eastern and Middle Sectors, in addition to the existing General-level mechanism in the Western Sector.
These developments were stated to be part of efforts to stabilise the India-China relationship, which had plunged to its nadir since the 1962 India-China war in the aftermath of the Chinese aggression along the LAC in 2020. It triggered a years-long Ladakh standoff and included several rounds of clashes along the de facto border, including the Galwan Valley clash in which 20 Indian and at least four Chinese soldiers were killed.
After several rounds of negotiations, India and China reached an understanding in Oct 2024 to partially resolve the standoff in Ladakh. The agreement paved the way for a meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Xi on the sidelines of the Brics summit in Russia. Since then, the two countries have maintained regular high-level engagements. But fundamental sources of friction in the relationship remain, noted the firstpost.com Aug 7.