National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and Chinese Foreign Minister Yi Wang met on Wednesday to resume the Special Representatives dialogue, aiming to restore bilateral relations that had been frozen for over four years due to a military standoff in eastern Ladakh. Doval, leading the Indian delegation, arrived on Tuesday to participate in the 23rd round of talks, which had been paused for five years. The last meeting took place in Delhi in 2019.

The leaders will talk about various topics, such as maintaining peace and calm along the LAC and improving the relationship between the two countries, which has been stalled for over four years because of the military standoff in eastern Ladakh. The two officials are also expected to discuss ways to rebuild their ties following the disengagement and patrolling agreement made on October 21 in eastern Ladakh. President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Narendra Modi met at Kazan, Russia, on the sidelines of the BRICS summit on October 24. China said Tuesday that it is optimistic about the talks and is willing to work with India to implement the commitments based on the shared understandings. 

In response to questions regarding the Special Representative (SR) negotiations, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian told a media briefing here that China is willing to resolve disagreements in a sincere manner. “China is ready to work with India to implement the important common understandings between the leaders of China and India, respect each other's core interests and major concerns, strengthen mutual trust through dialogue and communication, properly settle differences with sincerity and good faith, and bring bilateral relations back to the track of stable and healthy development as soon as possible,” he said. The two senior officials will discuss how to maintain peace and calm in the border areas and work towards a fair, reasonable, and mutually agreed solution to the boundary issue, as promised during the leaders' meeting in Kazan, according to the External Affairs Ministry on Monday.

Following the Modi-Xi meeting, which was the first in five years, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and his Chinese counterpart met at the G20 summit in Brazil. This was followed by a meeting of the Working Mechanism for Consultation & Coordination on China-India Border Affairs (WMCC). Relations between the two neighbours were severely strained as a result of the military stalemate along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh, which started in May 2020 and ended in a deadly conflict at the Galwan Valley in June of the same year. 

Trade aside, relations between the two countries almost came to a halt. The standoff ended after the disengagement process was completed at the last two points of tension, Demchok and Depsang, under an agreement finalised on October 21. The meeting of Special Representatives (SRs) is important because it marks the first formal effort to restore relations between the two countries. Established in 2003 to address the complex India-China border dispute of 3,488 km, the SRs mechanism has met 22 times over the years. Although it hasn't yet resolved the boundary issue, both sides view it as a valuable and effective tool for managing ongoing tensions.