Tag: Modi-Xi Meeting

Modi’s China visit: Issues and unresolved questions

- by India Writes Network

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the coastal Chinese city of Xiamen was important for several reasons. For one, this was the first time PM Modi and President Xi Jinping were meeting face-to-face since the standoff at Doklam, which saw an unprecedented sabre-ratting from the Chinese side. Scheduled ahead of the 19th Communist Party Congress, whose dates – beginning 18 October, 2017 – were announced just after the disengagement agreement, the 9th BRICS Summit – attended by the leaders of India, China, Russia, Brazil and South Africa – was showcased by Chinese President Xi Jinping as a platform for his global leadership. A combination of these circumstances, in addition to concerns expressed by the US and other powers, probably including Russia, the highly tense Korean peninsula and some quiet diplomacy by the Indian side led to the disengagement where the CBMs between the two armies firmly held, despite the jingoistic noises.
On the eve of the Chinese Communist Party Congress, the Chinese leader’s sensitivity about his projection as a global leader, with the new US president becoming less globally engaged, remains a significant domestic political factor. The post-October emergent shape of the Chinese leadership would make considerable difference as to how stable global situation would be where India’s vital interests – and its multi-vector international relationships – remain at stake. Read more….

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Modi-Xi meeting: Doklam is history, India, China to focus on future

- by Manish Chand

Putting the Doklam incident firmly behind, India and China have decided to steer their relationship on “an upward trajectory” by enhancing mutual trust and widening the arc of convergence.
Don’t look back, look forward to a brighter shared future – this was the big message coming out from wide-ranging talks between India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Xiamen. The first talks between the two leaders, after the Doklam incident threatened to derail relations and plunge the two Asian giants into a military conflict, lasted for over an hour. The talks firmed up a new big-picture understanding to start anew by managing their differences with mutual respect and sensitivity.
“It was a forward-looking approach. The discussions were constructive and forward-looking – where the relationship is going and will be going,” India’s Foreign Secretary S. Jaishhankar told Indian journalists at Wyndham Grand hotel.
In essence, what emerged from the Xiamen meeting between PM Modi and President Xi was a joint understanding and resolve on how to take this relationship forward.

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Hello Hangzhou: With NSG on mind, PM Modi braces for crucial meeting with Xi Jinping

- by Manish Chand

“Hello Hangzhou,” India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi greeted the residents of this picturesque Chinese city as he braces for a “constructive” summit of the world’s major economies and a crucial bilateral meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping amid a stalemate over India’s membership of the NSG.
Hordes of prominent Indians living in Hangzhou greeted Mr Modi as he entered Hotel Sheraton Grand around 10.30 pm (local time) to begin a two-day visit to China. Dressed in flowing kurta pyjama, Mr Modi looked fresh and invigorated from his successful trip to Hanoi where he announced $500 million assistance for Vietnam’s military modernisation. There are hardly 300-odd Indians in Hangzhou, but they made their presence felt as they beat drums and chanted “Modi, Modi” and “Bharat Mata ki Jai” as the prime minister went around shaking hands with them.
It will be a busy Sunday for PM Modi as he begins the day with what is clearly the most significant diplomatic engagement during his China trip – a meeting with the leader of the world’s second largest economy, who holds the key to India’s membership of the elite Nuclear Suppliers Group. The discussions will focus on recent irritants in bilateral ties with the thrust on restoring strategic equilibrium in this sensitive bilateral relationship that is prone to get bogged down in misunderstandings and the narrative of rivalry and competition. Mr Modi is expected to push the Chinese leader for a rethink on India’s membership of the NSG, which controls the global flow of nuclear material and equipment. India had singled out China as the sole spoiler for its failed bid to get into the NSG at the grouping’s plenary in Seoul in June. China had insisted on India signing the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as a precondition for its entry into the NSG, which was a clear deal-breaker and not acceptable to New Delhi as it regards the NPT discriminatory that divides the world into the nuclear haves and have-nots.

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India-China ties: Forging a new idiom of major powers relations

- by Manish Chand

It’s a transformational moment in the history of India-China relations, marked by an infusion of fresh energy, dynamism and creativity in the way the two neighbours engage with each other. This is the first time the leaders of the two Asian giants have visited each other’s country within nine months, signalling their resolve to proactively cooperate in fashioning an emerging Asian century. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s May 14-16 visit to three cities in China – Xian, Beijing and Shanghai – was unique in many ways and cohered multiple strands of variegated relationship between the two Asian juggernauts that comprise one-third of the world’s population and boast of a collective GDP of over $12 trillion.

Prime Minister Modi’s visit to China consolidated the momentum generated by President Xi Jinping’s maiden visit to India in September 2014. Put together, these twin visits, and initiatives taken during the tenure of the previous government in Delhi, crystallize the emerging alphabet of India-China relations: A for Asia; B for Business; C for Culture; and D for Diplomacy and Development. This new vocabulary and semantics is set to script afresh new pathways of cooperation between the two neighbours, which are often portrayed as rivals and competitors in the Asian hemisphere, but are incrementally forging an ambitious and all-encompassing cooperative partnership straddling diverse areas.

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