Beijing: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar arrived here Sunday on a key three-day visit to hold talks with the Chinese leadership on a host of issues including finalisation of arrangements for President Xi Jinping’s visit to India later this year for the second informal summit with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The visit of S Jaishankar, the first Indian minister to tour China after the Modi government began its second term, is also taking place in the aftermath of India’s decision to revoke special status to Jammu and Kashmir and its division into two Union Territories – Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh. His visit was finalised much before India’s move to revoke Article 370 of the Constitution that gave special status to Jammu and Kashmir.
Jaishankar, who is the first career diplomat to become the External Affairs Minister, served as India’s Ambassador to China from 2009 to 2013, the longest tenure by an Indian envoy.
S Jaishankar’s official engagements will begin Monday with a call on Chinese leadership. It has not been officially announced yet about whom he would be meeting. It will be followed by bilateral meeting with Chinese State Councillor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
Later the two ministers will also co-chair the second meeting of the High-Level Mechanism on Cultural and People-to-People Exchanges. The first was meeting held in New Delhi last year.
They are also scheduled to address the media at the closing ceremony of the 4th India-China High Level Media Forum being organised by China Public Diplomacy Association and attend a cultural gala being held by Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism.
Four Memorandum of Understandings (MOUs) are expected to be signed during Jaishankar’s visit.
Officials say his talks with Wang would cover wide ranging issues including finalisation of arrangements for the President Xi’s visit to India. Modi and Xi set the bilateral relations back on track with their first-ever informal summit last year at Wuhan after a 73-day standoff at Doklam between the two militaries in 2017.
The longstanding issue of India’s concerns over trade deficit, which last year climbed to over USD 57 billion in the USD 95.5 billion bilateral trade is expected to figure in talks. Official expectations are that the bilateral trade for the first time would cross USD 100 billion this year.
Chinese officials have been holding talks with their counterparts to enhance India’s exports specially the pharmaceuticals and IT besides agricultural products. India is also seeking major Chinese investments in Modi’s ‘Make in India’ campaign.
PTI