EAM likely to visit China for SCO meet later this month

External affairs minister S Jaishankar is expected to visit China in the third week of July toattend a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) foreign ministers’ meeting and for bilateral meetings with key Chinese leaders, people familiar with the matter said.

- Rezaul H Laskar

This will be Jaishankar's first visit to China since bilateral relations were taken to their lowest point in six decades by a military standoff in Ladakh sector of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) that began in April-May 2020. Since India and China reached an understanding on ending the face-off last October, Jaishankar has met his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on the margins of multilateral events several times.

Jaishankar is expected to travel to Beijing for a bilateral meeting with Wang before going to Tianjin for the meeting of the SCO Council of Ministers of Foreign Affairs during July 14-15, the people said on condition of anonymity. The bilateral meeting will be part of an ongoing series of meetings between senior Indian and Chinese officials to find a solution to the longstanding border dispute.

Efforts to speed up deescalation and withdrawal of troops to peacetime positions along the LAC and measures to normalise ties in areas such as trade and people-to-people contacts are expected to figure in Jaishankar’s discussions with Wang, the people said. While the two sides recently agreed to revive the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra in Tibet after a gap of five years, Beijing has pushed for normalisation of trade and resumption of direct flights.

The Indian side has also taken up China’s export curbs on rare earth minerals — which are used in everything from smartphones to electric vehicles and in many of which Beijing has a near monopoly—and longstanding concerns about lack of adequate access to Chinese markets.