China announced on Tuesday that foreign minister Qin Gang will visit India this week to attend the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting, with external affairs minister S Jaishankar expected to hold talks with his counterparts from China, Russia and the US on the sidelines of the gathering.
Foreign ministers from the world’s largest economies will meet in New Delhi during March 1-2 under the shadow of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and increasingly tense US-China ties. This will be the first visit to India by Qin, a close aide of President Xi Jinping, since he replaced Wang Yi as foreign minister last December.
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People familiar with the matter said Jaishankar is expected to hold bilateral meetings with US secretary of state Antony Blinken, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, Chinese foreign minister Qin and several other counterparts on the margins of the G20 meet. This will be Qin’s first bilateral meeting with Jaishankar.
The Indian side is expected to reiterate to Qin its stated position on the dragging military standoff on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Ladakh – that bilateral ties cannot be normalised without disengagement of troops at all friction points and restoration of peace and tranquillity in border areas. The face-off and the brutal Galwan Valley clash in June 2020, in which 20 Indian soldiers and an unspecified number of Chinese troops were killed, have taken India-China relations to their lowest point in six decades.
The meeting between Qin and Jaishankar will be an opportunity to assess the situation on the LAC and to evaluate the outcomes of diplomatic and military talks to tackle the tension, the people said.
China’s foreign ministry said in a brief statement that Qin will attend the G20 foreign ministers meet on March 2 at the invitation of Jaishankar. “As the main forum for international economic cooperation, the G20 should focus on addressing outstanding challenges in the field of international economy and development and play a greater role in promoting world economic recovery and global development,” foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told a regular briefing.
Qin, who was earlier envoy to the US, was appointed the foreign minister amid a number of disputes involving China, including the LAC standoff with India that has lasted nearly three years. He referred to the India-China border issue in an article titled “How China Sees the World” written late last year.
“As to the border issues between China and India, the status quo is that both sides are willing to ease the situation and jointly protect peace along their borders,” Qin wrote.
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Previous Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi visited India in March 2022. During a meeting with Jaishankar at that time, Wang reiterated China’s position that the border issue should be put in its “proper place” and the dispute shouldn’t be allowed to define overall bilateral ties.
Lin Minwang, deputy director of Shanghai University’s Institute of South Asia Studies, said: “This (Qin’s visit) can be regarded as support for India’s multilateral diplomatic activities. On the whole, under the current complex international situation, China supports India’s more active international role.”
Jaishankar’s meeting with Lavrov will be an opportunity to assess the India-Russia relationship amid renewed pressure on India from the West to take a stand on Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. India has so far brushed aside such pressure and ramped up purchases of Russian crude, pointing to the need to ensure energy security amid volatility on the global energy market.
