Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will travel to China to strengthen bilateral relations.
Chinese State Councilor Wang Yi announced the news that the Indian Prime Minister and President Xi will meet on Friday 28 and Saturday 29 April in the city of Wuhan, in central China. Wang's confirmation, which took place on Sunday 22 April, came at the end of a meeting with the Indian foreign minister, Sushma Swaraj, in Beijing. "This year, under the leadership of our leaders, relations between China and India have made positive progress and marked a recovery," said Wang, adding that now both countries must work hard to ensure that the meetings between their respective diplomats mark a new milestone in the consolidation of bilateral ties. Finally, the Chinese adviser said that, by developing their diplomatic relations, China and India should also look to strengthen their cooperation while respecting each other's differences. Wang's words were disclosed by the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
The upcoming visit by Modi to China is all the more unexpected as a visit to the Asian country is also scheduled for next June, during a summit to be held in Qingdao; this meeting is organized by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a Chinese and Russian-led security group to which, starting from 2017, India has also joined. It is rare for members of a foreign delegation to visit China twice a row at such close intervals, as will be the case in India. Xi Jinping, moreover, will return to Modi the honor of receiving it outside the capital of Beijing, which is almost never the case, unless there are multilateral vertexes to take part in.
Modi has tried to reconnect ties with China after some events that have endangered the relationship between the two countries, in particular the disputes over the relative borders with Tibet. The two nations, in the summer of 2017, remained for a long time in a phase of tension and stalemate with the danger of a military intervention by one of the two armies, deployed for 73 days along the aforementioned disputed border. Against this backdrop, soldiers from both sides started throwing stones and fighting. The dispute between the two countries, both equipped with nuclear arsenals, along the slopes of the Himalayas, highlighted Indian concerns about the expansion of Chinese economic influence and the growing weight that Beijing exerts, in terms of security, on the sphere of 'South Asia. The ambitious Chinese initiative called Belt and Road, concerning the construction of infrastructure, means of transport and energy routes, does not touch India, except for a small portion of the disputed border in the Kashmir region, which is also claimed by Pakistan ; however, the Chinese infrastructure project embraces the neighboring countries: Sri-Lanka, Nepal and the Maldives.
In India, Modi's nationalist government recently made a turnaround in its strategy of bilateral ties with Beijing, probably in light of the fact that a more intransigent policy has proved ineffective. Even the Dalai Lama, a Tibetan spiritual leader who lives in India and whom China considers a dangerous separatist, is currently being treated with great coldness by the government of the Indian prime minister. In March 2018, India first enacted a ban prohibiting Tibetans from holding a rally with the Dalai Lama in New Delhi. This event was supposed to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the start of their riots against the Chinese government. There are further areas of disagreement that still remain unsolved between Beijing and New Delhi; in particular, China blocked India's entry to a nuclear cartel, and also vetoed a series of proposed sanctions against a Masood Azhar, the leader of the militant group Jaish-e-Mohammad, operating in Pakistan and responsible for attacks on Indian territory.