Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: A day after criticizing the US for high tariffs on Indian imports, China has welcomed Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit, to be held in Tianjin city on August 31 and September 1, as Beijing seeks closer ties with New Delhi amid fast-changing geopolitical landscape.
Welcoming PM Modi to Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said on Friday that the Tianjin Summit will be the largest in scale since the establishment of the SCO in 2001, the media reported.
“We believe that with the concerted effort of all parties, the Tianjin Summit will be a gathering of solidarity, friendship, and fruitful results, and the SCO will enter a new stage of high-quality development featuring greater solidarity, coordination, dynamism, and productiveness.”
The SCO was established to promote regional stability through cooperation. The bloc currently comprises 10 members: Belarus, China, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.
The Tianjin meeting and related events will be attended by the heads of all 10 member states, besides the heads of 10 international organizations.
The China visit would be a first by PM Modi since the 2020 Galwan clash, which had frayed ties between the two countries. His last visit was in 2019. He had last met Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit in Kazan in October 2024, following which efforts to reduce tensions between the two neighbours gained momentum.
PM Modi is likely to hold bilateral meetings as well with Russian President Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the upcoming summit.
His visit assumes significance in the wake of hefty tariffs being imposed on India by US President Donald Trump for buying Russian crude oil and arms. The tariffs had earlier appeared to bring the two nations closer, with President Xi Jinping telling his Indian counterpart Droupadi Murmu that the two countries must work more closely together.
The meeting also comes in the backdrop of Chinese support to Pakistan and the Pahalgam attack in May this year. During a recent summit of SCO defence ministers, India’s Rajnath Singh had refused to sign a joint statement since it mentioned Baluchistan but not the Pahalgam terror attack that claimed 26 lives.