NEW DELHI: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping will hold their first bilateral meeting in five years Wednesday, Indian officials said, days after their countries reached a deal on their contested border.
The meeting will take place on the sidelines of the three-day BRICS gathering hosted by President Vladimir Putin in the Russian city of Kazan, a sign of a potential thaw between the neighbours since clashes between their troops in 2020.
“There will be a bilateral meeting held between Prime Minister Modi and President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the BRICS summit,” senior Indian foreign ministry official Vikram Misri said late Tuesday.
The leaders of the world’s two most populous nations last held face-to-face formal talks when Xi visited Modi in the Indian city of Mahabalipuram in October of 2019.
Months later, in 2020, relations plunged after a skirmish along their contested frontier in the high-altitude Himalayan region of Ladakh, in which at least 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers were killed.
China and India are intense rivals and have accused each other of trying to seize territory along their unofficial divide, known as the Line of Actual Control.
Since then, both sides pulled back tens of thousands of troops and agreed not to send patrols into a narrow dividing strip.
But India on Monday said that “agreement has been arrived at on patrolling arrangements” with China, easing the military standoff.
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Modi and Xi met briefly in Bali in Indonesia on the sidelines of the G20 leaders’ meeting in 2022, and in Johannesburg in South Africa in 2023.
India, however, maintained that ties could not return to normal unless the pre-clash status quo at their Ladakh frontier was restored.
In the last four years, New Delhi made it harder for many Chinese companies to invest in critical Indian sectors, and banned hundreds of Chinese gaming and e-commerce apps, including TikTok.
New Delhi also forged deeper ties with the so-called Quad, a US-led group that includes India, Australia and Japan, and hopes to counter China’s influence in the Asia-Pacific region.
India eased laws for Western companies to invest and co-produce military hardware in the country.
Beijing is now expected to push New Delhi to restore economic ties and access for its companies in the fast-growing Indian market.
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