The Border Still Comes First
India has been clear about one thing: there can be no durable improvement in relations with China without peace and tranquillity along the Line of Actual Control. External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar has reiterated precisely that position, reflecting India's experience after the 2020 Galwan crisis and the prolonged military standoff that followed. That is why Doval is the right person for this engagement. He is not travelling to Beijing as a trade negotiator looking for a quick commercial reset. He is India's National Security Adviser and the Special Representative for the boundary question. The message is therefore straightforward: India is willing to engage. But engagement does not mean forgetting the border.
The 25th round of talks is not expected to magically resolve a boundary dispute that has existed for decades. Its immediate importance is more practical: maintaining stability, managing friction and preventing the border from again becoming the dominant source of crisis in the relationship. That matters because India has much larger strategic calculations underway.
Then Comes Xi
The next major question is whether Xi Jinping will actually come to New Delhi. The signs are increasingly strong. Reuters has reported that Chinese preparations are underway for what could be Xi's first visit to India in seven years, with a large delegation reportedly being planned. His participation, however, has not yet been officially confirmed by Beijing.
If Xi does come, a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi would be one of the most consequential India-China political encounters since the relationship deteriorated after 2020. And that is precisely why Doval's visit matters. Before leaders meet, difficult issues are normally cleared, narrowed or at least understood. The border remains the hardest of those issues.
But it isn't the only one. Trade, investment, technology, supply chains and the broader global balance will inevitably sit in the background. India does not need to choose between engaging China and competing with China. It can do both. In fact, that may be the only realistic strategy.
As Xi Jinping is expected in New Delhi for the BRICS summit, Ajit Doval's Beijing visit comes at a crucial moment for India-China ties and for India's wider effort to shape a changing global economic and strategic order.
By Geopolitical Analysis
Desk, The Centre
25 August 2026 • 06:47 PM IST • 6 min read
Ajit Doval's visit to Beijing is officially about the India-China boundary. But it would be a mistake to look at it only through the border.
On August 25, India's National Security Adviser met Chinese Vice President Han Zheng in Beijing before holding the 25th round of Special Representatives' talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. The discussions are focused on maintaining peace and tranquillity along the border, while also covering wider bilateral, regional and international issues. The timing is what makes the visit particularly important. India is preparing to host the BRICS summit in New Delhi on September 12–13, with Chinese President Xi Jinping expected to attend, although Beijing has not yet formally confirmed his visit. Russian President Vladimir Putin is also expected to be a major presence at the summit.Doval's Beijing visit therefore looks less like an isolated border exercise and more like part of India's preparation for a much larger strategic conversation.
India's Bigger BRICS Opportunity
This is where the story becomes much larger than India-China relations. The global economic environment is changing rapidly.
Tariffs are increasingly being used as instruments of economic pressure. Supply chains are being reorganised. Energy security has become inseparable from geopolitics. The Middle East remains unstable. And countries across the developing world are increasingly concerned about how vulnerable their trade and financial systems are to decisions taken elsewhere.
India's BRICS presidency gives New Delhi an opportunity to shape that conversation. And India has already begun doing so.
At the recent BRICS Trade Ministers' meeting in Jaipur, members endorsed work on a BRICS Economic Partnership Strategy 2030, while India pushed for more resilient and diversified global value chains and expanded trade in services.
The agenda is therefore moving beyond the traditional language of “developing countries versus the West.”
It is becoming about strategic economic resilience. That is a much more useful framework for India.
The De-dollarisation Question Is Real
This is also where the discussion about de-dollarisation needs to be understood properly. India is not proposing to create a common BRICS currency. Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal has explicitly said New Delhi does not support such a proposal. But that does not mean India is uninterested in reducing dependence on dollar-centric financial infrastructure. There is an important difference. India can support:
more local-currency trade → better cross-border payment connectivity → lower transaction costs → greater financial resilience
without attempting to replace the dollar. And that process is already being discussed. RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra said BRICS members are examining potential links between their fast-payment systems and central-bank digital currencies. He also said India would continue efforts to internationalise the rupee and promote local currencies in cross-border trade and payments.
That is de-dollarisation in a more practical form. Not the collapse of the dollar. Not a sudden BRICS currency. But gradually creating a world in which countries have more choices about how they settle trade and move money across borders.
And This Is Where UPI Becomes Strategic
India has something most countries talking about payment alternatives do not have at comparable scale:UPI.
Ten years after its launch, UPI processed more than 24,162 crore transactions in FY2025–26, with transaction value of roughly ₹314 lakh crore. It is now operational in 11 countries. That makes UPI more than a domestic convenience. It is increasingly part of India's digital public infrastructure diplomacy. If payment systems across major emerging economies can eventually become interoperable, transactions could potentially move more directly between national payment rails rather than relying as heavily on traditional intermediaries.
That does not eliminate the dollar. But it can reduce friction. And over time, reducing friction can change behaviour. The strategic opportunity for India is therefore not to declare war on the dollar. It is to ensure that India does not become unnecessarily dependent on any single external financial architecture.
Energy and the Middle East
There is another issue that cannot be separated from this conversation: energy security. India, China and Russia all have enormous stakes in the stability of global energy markets. Any prolonged instability in the Middle East affects crude prices, shipping routes, insurance costs, inflation and ultimately economic growth. For India, this is particularly important. New Delhi needs stable energy supplies, diversified sources and predictable shipping routes.
BRICS provides a forum where major energy producers and major energy consumers sit at the same table. That makes discussions around energy security, supply-chain resilience and Middle East stability strategically relevant even when they are not formally packaged as one single negotiation. India does not need ideological alignment among BRICS members. It needs functional cooperation where Indian interests demand it.
India Is Not Choosing Sides. It Is Expanding Its Options.
This is perhaps the most important point. India's engagement with China does not mean India is abandoning its strategic relationship with the United States. India's engagement with Russia does not mean India is joining a Russian geopolitical bloc. India's push for alternative payment mechanisms does not mean India wants to destroy the dollar. And India's participation in BRICS does not require India to agree with every member on every issue. India's objective is more straightforward: Strategic autonomy.
A world in which India can trade with China, buy energy from Russia and the Gulf, cooperate with the United States on technology and defence, use European capital and simultaneously develop its own payment and digital infrastructure is a world in which New Delhi has greater room to manoeuvre. That is the real value of India's multi-alignment.
Doval's Beijing Visit Is Therefore About More Than the Border
The immediate task is still clear. Keep the border peaceful. The next task is equally important. Create enough political stability for Modi and Xi to engage meaningfully if Xi comes to Delhi. And beyond that lies India's larger objective at BRICS: Build a more resilient global economic system in which emerging powers have greater choices over trade, payments, energy and finance.
The border is the gate through which India-China relations must pass. But it is not the entire destination. Doval is dealing with the immediate security problem in Beijing. India is preparing for a much bigger conversation in New Delhi. And if Xi and Putin do sit across from Modi next month, the discussion will be about much more than the Himalayas. It will be about who gets to shape the next phase of the global order.
