Listen to this article:

New Delhi: Chinese President Xi Jinping will spend just under 24 hours in Delhi this weekend for the BRICS summit, his first visit to India in seven years after a four-year military standoff along the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh froze high-level political engagement between the two countries.

The visit, which had been anticipated for months, was formally announced by Beijing on Thursday. China’s foreign ministry said Xi would travel to New Delhi at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s invitation to attend the 18th BRICS Summit on September 12 and 13.

Xi is scheduled to arrive in Delhi at around 12.25 pm on Saturday and is expected to hold a bilateral meeting with Modi in the evening. The two leaders are also due to attend a gala dinner for BRICS leaders beginning at 7.30 pm. On Sunday, Xi will attend the second session of the summit before leaving for the airport at around 12.20 pm, making his stay roughly 24 hours.

He is travelling with a delegation of around 60-70 persons, including foreign minister Wang Yi and will be at New Delhi’s Taj Palace hotel.

The last time Xi was in India was in October 2019, when he travelled to Mamallapuram for his second informal summit with Modi. That visit too lasted less than 24 hours, but it was a bilateral engagement focused on the India-China relationship rather than a multilateral summit.

The 2019 meeting produced a new high-level economic and trade dialogue mechanism and commitments to improve military and security communication, while both sides reiterated the importance of managing differences along the boundary.

But within a few months, the COVID-19 pandemic brought the entire world to a grinding halt. Then, in the summer of 2020, clashes along the border in eastern Ladakh escalated into a prolonged military standoff, resulting in the first fatalities on the India-China border in 45 years.

The four-year military standoff........

© The Wire