External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar will arrive in Beijing on Sunday evening. It would be Jaishankar’s first visit to China after the violent clashes in the Galwan Valley. The visit comes as both India and China seek to reduce tensions and normalize relations.
Jaishankar will meet Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in a bilateral meeting. The last talks between the two leaders occurred in Johannesburg during the G20 summit in February this year.
Besides this, Jaishankar will attend the meeting of Foreign Ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), scheduled to be held in Tianjin on July 15. The Ministry of External Affairs has confirmed his visit and said that Jaishankar will hold several bilateral meetings apart from the summit.
This visit is taking place when India-China relations are at a very low level. Earlier, Defense Minister Rajnath Singh and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval had also visited China to attend the SCO meeting. Wang Yi’s visit to India is also proposed next month, where he may hold special representative-level talks with Ajit Doval regarding the border dispute.
Although diplomatic talks are taking place between the two countries, China’s recent trade policies have worried India. China has stopped supplying essential items like rare earth magnets, fertilizers, and digging machines for the bullet train project to India. Besides this, China’s support to Pakistan, especially during the May clashes, remains a cause of concern for India.
In June, India refused to sign the SCO declaration as its concerns on terrorism were not mentioned. The April 22 terror attack in Pahalgam, Jammu & Kashmir, was excluded, but included references to incidents in Pakistan.
The SCO is a 10-nation Eurasian organisation, which includes countries like India, China, Russia, Pakistan and Iran. Its 25th summit is proposed in Tianjin later this year. India chaired it in 2023 and its summit was held in Pakistan in 2024.
The Galwan clash of 2020 was the deadliest on the India-China border in the last four decades, in which soldiers were killed on both sides. The relationship deteriorated drastically after this conflict. But after the meeting of Prime Minister Modi and President Xi Jinping in Kazan, Russia in October last year, both countries agreed to resume the talks of special representatives.
A positive initiative amid all this was that the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra has been resumed after nearly five years. It is not yet clear whether Prime Minister Modi will participate in the upcoming SCO summit.
