Prime Minister Narendra Modi will hold a bilateral meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on August 31 on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in China. The SCO summit will be held in Tianjin on August 31 and September 1.
From August 31–September 1, PM Modi will travel to Tianjin, China, at the invitation of President Xi, to attend the SCO Summit amid signs of a thaw in the bilateral ties following a spell of a fractious relationship over the eastern Ladakh border row. This will be PM Modi's first visit to China in seven years, underscoring the significance of the trip in the context of evolving regional and global dynamics.
PM Modi's trip to China comes against the backdrop of a downturn in India-US ties after US President Donald Trump doubled tariffs on Indian goods to a whopping 50 per cent, including 25 per cent additional duties for New Delhi's purchase of Russian crude oil.
Modi-Xi interactions after Galwan
After the Galwan clashes in 2020, PM Modi and President Xi Jinping met twice. First, in November 2022, they exchanged greetings on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Bali. However, in October 2024, during the BRICS Summit in Kazan, Russia, for the first time, both leaders held their first formal talks in five years.
The ties between the two neighbours nosedived following the deadly clashes between Indian and Chinese troops in the Galwan valley in eastern Ladakh in June 2020. The eastern Ladakh face-off effectively ended following the completion of the disengagement process from the last two friction points of Demchok and Depsang under an agreement finalised on October 21 last year.
PM Modi last visited China in June 2018 to attend the SCO summit. The Chinese president visited India in October 2019 for the second "informal summit".
SCO Summit
India has been a member of the SCO since 2017 and held the presidency in 2022–23. The MEA said Modi’s participation reaffirms India’s active role in shaping the forum’s regional security and economic agenda.
Apart from PM Modi, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, along with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Indonesian counterpart Prabowo Subianto, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, Pakistan PM Shehbaz Sharif and Maldives President Mohamed Muizzu are some of the prominent leaders who will attend the SCO summit.
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