NATIONAL SECURITY Adviser Ajit Doval will host his Chinese counterpart and state councillor Yang Jiechi for the 20th round of annual boundary negotiations here on December 22. This will be the first meeting between the two special representatives since the Doklam face-off was resolved, although they had met during the BRICS summit in Xiamen in early September. Announcing the meeting on Wednesday, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said in a statement, “At the invitation of Ajit Doval, National Security Adviser and the Special Representative of India on the Boundary Question, Yang Jiechi, State Councillor and Member of the Politburo of Communist Party of China’s Central Committee and Special Representative of China on the Boundary Question, will visit India on December 22 to hold the 20th meeting of special representatives.” This comes days after External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj hosted the Russia-India-China trilateral meeting with their foreign ministers. China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi had taken part in the meet. On Tuesday, China said that the Doklam stand-off had posed a “major test” for bilateral ties and lessons should be learnt from it to avoid a similar situation in the future. “This special representative meeting is not only a high-level channel for the border issue discussion but also the platform for strategic communication,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said at a media briefing. This also allows the two sides to exchange views on international and regional issues of major concern, she said. “In 2017, China-India relations have maintained a good momentum generally but the Doklam incident posed a major test for the two countries. We should learn lessons from this incident to avoid any further conflict of this kind in the future,” Hua said.
