MoDi To viSiT CHinA on APr 27-28 For SUMMiT TAlkS WiTH Xi

BEIJING

— Chinese President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Narendra Modi and will hold a summit meeting in China’s Wuhan city from April 27 to 28 to improve bilateral relations, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi announced here on Sunday.

Prime Minister Modi will be visiting the central Chinese city at the invitation of President Xi, Wang said at a joint media event with visiting External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj after their talks.

Informed sources said that it will be an informal summit meeting between Xi and Modi during which both leaders will try to work out a new paradigm for the bilateral ties bogged down with a host of disputes and differences.

This will be fourth visit of Modi to China after he came to power in 2014. He is again due to visit China to take part in the SCO summit to be held at Qingdao city on June 9-10. The Modi-Xi summit meeting is taking place in the backdrop of series of high level interactions between both the two countries starting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang’s visit to India in December, the first after Dokalam standoff.

It was followed by two meetings between National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi and the visit early this year by Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale to Beijing. —