The SCO summit will be held in Tianjin city from August 31 and September 1.
- China welcomes PM Modi to SCO summit in Tianjin on August 31 and September 1
- The SCO comprises 10 member states including China, India, Russia, and Pakistan
- This will be Modi's first China visit since the 2020 Galwan clash
China has welcomed Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his upcoming visit to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit, as Beijing seeks closer ties with New Delhi amid global concerns over the tariffs imposed by US President Donald Trump.
The regional bloc's summit will be held in Tianjin city from August 31 and September 1.
Welcoming PM Modi to Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said that the Tianjin Summit will be the largest in scale since the establishment of the SCO.
"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," he added.
The SCO was established in 2001 with an aim to promote regional stability through cooperation. The bloc currently comprises 10 members: Belarus, China, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.
The Tianjin meeting and related events will be attended by the heads of all 10 member states, besides the heads of 10 international organizations.
The China visit would be a first by PM Modi since the 2020 Galwan clash, which had frayed ties between the two countries. His last visit was in 2019. PM Modi had last met Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit in Kazan in October 2024, following which efforts to reduce tensions between the two neighbours had gained momentum.
PM Modi is likely to hold bilateral meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin and China's Jinping on the sidelines of the upcoming summit.
His visit assumes significance in the wake of hefty tariffs being imposed on India by Trump for buying Russian crude oil, which is expected to play out as a balancing factor for the US. The tariffs had earlier appeared to bring the two nations closer, with Jinping telling his Indian counterpart Droupadi Murmu that the two countries must work more closely together.
The meeting also comes in the backdrop of Chinese support to Pakistan and the Pahalgam attack. During a previous summit of SCO defence ministers, India's Rajnath Singh had refused to sign a joint statement since it mentioned Balochistan but not the Pahalgam terror attack that claimed 26 lives.
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