China welcomes PM Modi for SCO meet, says Tianjin Summit will be gathering of solidarity and friendship

Beijing: China on Friday said that it welcomes Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s participation in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit that is scheduled to take place at Tianjin, later this month.

“China welcomes Prime Minister Modi to China for the SCO Tianjin Summit. We believe that with the concerted effort of all parties, the Tianjin summit will be a gathering of solidarity, friendship and fruitful results, and the SCO will enter a new stage of high-quality development featuring greater solidarity, coordination, dynamism and productiveness,” Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Guo Jiakun said during a regular media briefing in Beijing.

“China will host the SCO Summit in Tianjin from August 31 to September 1 this year. Leaders of over 20 countries including all member states of the SCO and heads of 10 international organisations will attend relevant events. The SCO Tianjin Summit will be the largest summit in scale since the establishment of the SCO,” he added.

According to reports, Prime Minister Modi is set to travel to China to attend the SCO Summit to be held in Tianjin City from August 31-September 1. This will be PM Modi’s first visit to China since the violent Galwan clash in 2020, which severely strained bilateral ties.

PM Modi had earlier travelled to China in 2019. He also held a meeting with the Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit in Russia’s Kazan in 2024.

The breakthrough in bilateral talks, first after the Galwan Valley face-off between the soldiers of the two countries at the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in June 2020, was made possible after New Delhi and Beijing reached an agreement on patrolling along the nearly 3500-km Line of Actual Control (LAC) to end the four-year-long border confrontation.

In July, External Affairs Minister (EAM) S Jaishankar’s visited China to attend the Meeting of the SCO Council of Foreign Ministers in Tianjin. He also held discussions with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on the sidelines of the event. He also called on Chinese President Xi Jinping along with his fellow SCO Foreign Ministers.

Earlier in June, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh visited China to attend the SCO Defence Ministers Meeting. India had refused to endorse the joint declaration at the SCO Defence Ministers’ meeting, citing the exclusion of concerns around terrorism as a key reason.

India stated that it wanted concerns about terrorism reflected in the document, which was not acceptable to one particular country; therefore, the statement was not adopted. During his visit, Singh met his Chinese counterpart Admiral Don Jun and the two leaders had “constructive and forward looking exchange of views on issues related to bilateral ties.

National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval also visited China to attend the 20th meeting of the Security Council Secretaries of the SCO Member States in Beijing. In his intervention at the meeting, he highlighted the need to shun double standards in the fight against terrorism and take decisive actions against UN-proscribed terrorists and entities like LeT, JeM and their proxies and dismantle their terror eco-systems.

The SCO is a permanent intergovernmental international organisation established in Shanghai on June 15, 2001. The member states of SCO include India, Iran, Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Belarus.

–IANS