New Delhi: India has not yet received any confirmation on Chinese President Xi Jinping’s in-person participation at the upcoming G20 summit, people familiar with the matter said Thursday amid reports that he is unlikely to travel to New Delhi for it.
A majority of G20 leaders, including US President Joe Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Japanese Premier Fumio Kishida and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, have already confirmed their participation at the summit.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has already conveyed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi that it will not be possible for him to travel to India to participate in the summit.
India is hosting the G20 summit in New Delhi September 9 and 10.
The people cited above said China has not yet confirmed Xi’s in-person participation at the summit.
Asked about a media report that said Xi is likely to skip the upcoming G20 summit in India, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said at a media briefing in Beijing that he has nothing to offer on it.
“Of the Chinese leaders attending the G20 summit, I have nothing to offer at the moment,” Wang said.
The ties between India and China have been under severe strain since the deadly clashes in Galwan Valley in June 2020.
The Indian and Chinese troops are locked in an over three-year confrontation in certain friction points in eastern Ladakh even as the two sides completed disengagement from several areas following extensive diplomatic and military talks.
India has been consistently maintaining that peace and tranquillity along the LAC were key for normalisation of overall ties.
On its part, China has been arguing that the boundary question does not represent the “entirety” of the bilateral relations, insisting that the two sides should move forward on overall relations.
Prime Minister Modi and President Xi held an informal conversation August 23 on the sidelines of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) summit in Johannesburg.
Following the conversation, India’s Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra said Modi conveyed to Xi India’s concerns on the “unresolved” issues along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh, underlining that maintenance of peace and tranquillity in border areas was essential for normalisation of India-China ties.
Kwatra said the two leaders also agreed to direct their relevant officials to intensify efforts at “expeditious disengagement and de-escalation”.
However, the Chinese readout did not have any mention of this.
Monday, China released a so-called “standard map” laying claim over Arunachal Pradesh and the Aksai Chin drawing a strong protest from India.
The “map” also showed the entire South China Sea and Taiwan as part of China as it featured in the previous editions of the ‘map’.
PTI