Will Xi-Modi icebreaker redefine relations?
President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will meet in the city of Wuhan in Central China’s Hubei province on Friday and Saturday.
Indian media was rife with speculation about when and where the meeting would take place prior to Sunday’s announcement.
That Modi would attend this year’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Qingdao, Shandong province, in June was known.
Why then, wondered some in the diplomatic circles of New Delhi and Beijing, would he visit China barely two months ahead?
India and Pakistan joined the group, founded in 2001, as full members in Astana, Kazakhstan, last year.
I asked a similar question to Long Xingchun, director of the Center for Indian Studies at China West Normal University, which is located in Sichuan province. His response via social media was: “The two leaders have very important and urgent issues that need to be discussed.”
The leadership summit will involve comprehensive, long-term discussions on bilateral and global topics, remarks by State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi and India’s External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, suggested.
The talks are being described by officials as “informal”, owing perhaps to a more relaxed setting in a city by the Yangtze River and the apparent lack of ceremony.
It is still springtime in Wuhan, while summer has already arrived in Delhi and many other parts of India.
Some foreign policy commentators expect an easier environment for future engagements between the two countries to emerge from this. But skeptics are likely to wait and watch.
Sino-Indian relations were shadowed by a military standoff in 2017. The signs of revival in ties have appeared this year — from the visits this week by both Swaraj and India’s Defense Minister Nirmala Sitharaman for SCO meetings to the resumption of a dialogue between the economic planning bodies of the two countries. Commerce Minister Zhong Shan went to India in March amid brewing trade tensions between the United States and China.
It is not clear how prominently the border issue will figure at the weekend meeting.
But what we do know is that at least 20 rounds of discussions have been held by senior officials since a special representatives’ mechanism was set up by the two countries in 2003.
The Wuhan summit is being viewed as an opportunity for both countries to redefine relations, somewhat comparable in scope to a meeting between the late leaders Deng Xiaoping and Rajiv Gandhi 30 years ago. Gandhi’s China visit then was the first by an Indian prime minister in three decades.
New economic links are being formed despite India’s more than $50 billion trade deficit with China. And, Indian pharmaceutical companies, especially the makers of generic drugs, continue to knock on China’s door. Lately, Hindi films have discovered a market in China, with actor Aamir Khan as the big draw.
The summit’s significance could also lie in measures to tackle climate change or challenges to globalization.
China and India are seen as seeking to address such concerns in synchronicity at world forums.