PM Modi to visit China on Apr 27-28 for summit talks with Prez Xi

Beijing, Apr 22 (PTI) 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 today.

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.

Swaraj is in China for talks with Wang and to take part in the two-day meeting of Foreign Ministers of the eight-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) from tomorrow.

Informed sources told PTI 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.

The two countries also held 11th Joint Economic Group meeting and the fifth Strategic Economic Dialogue (SED) here recently.

Besides meetings between officials from the two foreign ministries on both sides held working mechanism meeting on border affairs and cross border rivers as well disarmament and non-proliferation dialogue in which India’s entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) was discussed and culminated in today’s talks between Swaraj and Wang.