PM Modi to visit China on April 27-28, hold ‘informal meeting’ with Xi Jinping

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will hold talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping during an informal summit on April 27 and 28 in Wuhan city, China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi announced on Sunday.

According to news agency PTI, the two-day meet on April 27 and 28 will be an informal summit meet between President Xi and PM Modi during which both leaders will try to work out a new paradigm for the bilateral ties bogged down with a host of disputes and differences.

The announcement was made at a joint statement by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swarajand her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on Sunday.

"We will make sure that the informal summit(between PM Modi and President Jinping on April 27-28) will be a complete success and a milestone in China-India relations," Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said.

"We see socialism with Chinese characteristics entering a new era and India acts as a crucial stage in its development and revitalisation. It is against this backdrop that President Xi and Prime Minister Modi have decided to hold the informal summit," Wang Yi further said.

Modi's possible visit for a standalone bilateral summit would be a big step in improving relations after the ties hit a low in 2017 over the Dokalam standoff.

Since 2015, Modi has visited China every year. While in 2015 he was on a bilateral trip, the PM was in China in 2016 for G-20 Summit followed by BRICS Summit in Xiamen in 2017.

The Modi-Xi meeting is taking place in the backdrop of series of high level interactions between the two countries starting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang's visit to India in December, the first after Dokalam standoff.

It was followed by two meetings between National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi and the visit early this year by Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale to Beijing.

The two countries also held 11th Joint Economic Group meeting and the fifth Strategic Economic Dialogue (SED) here recently.

Swaraj is in China for talks with Wang and to take part in the two-day meeting of Foreign Ministers of the eight-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) from Monday.

OneIndia News (with PTI inputs)