NEW DELHI: A week before the G20 summit, China continued to maintain silence on whether President Xi Jinping will travel to India for the event even though his visit seemed unlikely. The Chinese foreign ministry on Thursday refused to confirm, or deny, a report by Reuters that quoted diplomatic sources, including in Beijing, as saying that Chinese Premier Li Qiang was likely to represent China at the summit.
While China, according to Indian government sources, hadn’t officially conveyed to India anything on Xi’s participation till early Thursday, the fact that China didn’t deny the report was significant for the Indian government as it seemed to suggest he was not inclined to come.
Xi has attended all in-person G20 summits since he took office in 2013, except the 2021 summit in Italy that he didn’t travel because of China’s Covind-19 restrictions. If Xi does indeed not participate, it will be interesting to see how Beijing justifies his absence from the summit.
Xi will be the second P5 country leader to skip the summit after Russian President Vladimir Putin. Unlike Xi though, Putin had skipped the 2022 G20 Bali summit as well.
Asked about the media report, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said at a briefing in Beijing that he had nothing to offer on it. “Of the Chinese leaders attending the G20 summit, I have nothing to offer at the moment,” Wang said.
Xi’s likely absence will also come at a time the West is looking to re-engage China to stabilise ties. There have been four high-level bilateral visits from the US to China in the past couple of months and UK foreign secretary James Cleverly too flew into Beijing this week to meet his counterpart Wang Yi. There had been speculation also of a bilateral meeting between Xi and his US counterpart Joe Biden on the margins and also with UK PM Rishi Sunak, who was quoted as saying that he was open to a meeting with Xi in Delhi.
While India is not unduly worried about Xi’s visit, any downgrading of China’s G20 participation is unlikely to be good news for the bilateral relationship. The recent military talks and a positively worded joint statement on the LAC stand-off, even in the absence of any real breakthrough, seemed intended to pave the pay for cordial exchanges between the leaders — both at Brics and G20. The informal conversation in Johannesburg though only led to another round of acrimony that culminated in China publicly reissuing its map that showed Indian territories in it and India lodging a strong protest.
While China, according to Indian government sources, hadn’t officially conveyed to India anything on Xi’s participation till early Thursday, the fact that China didn’t deny the report was significant for the Indian government as it seemed to suggest he was not inclined to come.
Xi has attended all in-person G20 summits since he took office in 2013, except the 2021 summit in Italy that he didn’t travel because of China’s Covind-19 restrictions. If Xi does indeed not participate, it will be interesting to see how Beijing justifies his absence from the summit.
Xi will be the second P5 country leader to skip the summit after Russian President Vladimir Putin. Unlike Xi though, Putin had skipped the 2022 G20 Bali summit as well.
Asked about the media report, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said at a briefing in Beijing that he had nothing to offer on it. “Of the Chinese leaders attending the G20 summit, I have nothing to offer at the moment,” Wang said.
Xi’s likely absence will also come at a time the West is looking to re-engage China to stabilise ties. There have been four high-level bilateral visits from the US to China in the past couple of months and UK foreign secretary James Cleverly too flew into Beijing this week to meet his counterpart Wang Yi. There had been speculation also of a bilateral meeting between Xi and his US counterpart Joe Biden on the margins and also with UK PM Rishi Sunak, who was quoted as saying that he was open to a meeting with Xi in Delhi.
While India is not unduly worried about Xi’s visit, any downgrading of China’s G20 participation is unlikely to be good news for the bilateral relationship. The recent military talks and a positively worded joint statement on the LAC stand-off, even in the absence of any real breakthrough, seemed intended to pave the pay for cordial exchanges between the leaders — both at Brics and G20. The informal conversation in Johannesburg though only led to another round of acrimony that culminated in China publicly reissuing its map that showed Indian territories in it and India lodging a strong protest.
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