Prime Minister Narendra Modi to leave for China today

Both External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Defense Minister Nirmala Sitharaman have visited China to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)meeting, where the former had informed that PM Modi will visit China.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will leave for China on Thursday evening to attend an informal summit, to be hosted by Chinese President Xi Jinping in Wuhan city on April 27 and 28.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Sunday at the joint press conference with his Indian counterpart Sushma Swaraj in Beijing, “We will make sure that the informal summit (between PM Modi and Chinese President Jinping on April 27-28) will be a complete success and a milestone in China-India relations.”

The informal summit is being seen as a move by the two countries to get their ties back on track following the Doklam stand-off last year, wherein troops from the two nations were engaged in an eyeball-to-eyeball standoff near Sikkim border between June to August.

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The summit comes ahead of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Qingdao city in June.

No agreements will be signed between India and China and no customary joint press conference will be held during Prime Minister Modi’s two-day visit. 

Sources said that the summit is not the platform where the two leaders will discuss specific issues like the UN ban on Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed terror group chief Masood Azhar and tick off one by one.

A veto-wielding permanent member of the UN Security Council, China has repeatedly blocked India’s move to designate Azhar a global terrorist under the Al-Qaeda Sanctions Committee of the UNSC.

The idea for a such a summit was mooted when PM Modi and Xi met during the BRICS summit at Xiamen last year in the backdrop of the Dokalam standoff and evolved steadily over the months with high-level meetings starting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi to Delhi last December.

Modeled on the 1988 ice-breaking summit between former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and Chinese paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, the summit would look at the big picture of India-China relations.