Chinese foreign minister likely to hold 1st meeting with Jaishankar

Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang will travel to India to attend the meeting of G20 foreign ministers on March 2, during which he is expected to hold his first bilateral meeting with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar.

This will be Qin's first visit to India after he succeeded Foreign Minister and State Councillor Wang Yi in December last year.

Wang visited India in 2019 to participate in the special representatives dialogue on the border mechanism followed by a ”working visit” to New Delhi in 2022.

Wang and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval were the special representatives then. 

”At the invitation of External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar of G20 President India, Foreign Minister Qin Gang will attend the G20 foreign ministers' meeting in New Delhi on March 2,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning announced at a media briefing in Beijing on Tuesday.

Sources said during his visit to New Delhi, Qin is expected to have a bilateral meeting with Jaishankar on the sidelines of the G20 foreign ministers meeting.

When asked about China's expectations from the G20 foreign ministers' meeting, Mao said: ”In a world fraught with uncertainties and struggling to reboot the economy, countries have much to do to overcome the challenges in order to deliver on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.”

”As the premier forum for international economic cooperation, it is important that the G20 focus on the prominent challenges in the global economy and on development and play a bigger role in driving world economic recovery and global development," she said.

”China stands ready to work with all parties to ensure that the G20 foreign ministers' meeting will send a positive signal on multilateralism, food and energy security and development cooperation,” she added.

Relations between China and India have virtually frozen ever since the eastern Ladakh military standoff between the two countries in May 2020.

The two countries have held 17 rounds of high-level military commanders' talks to resolve the standoff.

India has been maintaining that its ties with China cannot be normal unless there is peace in the border areas.

Last week, senior officials of India and China held an in-person meeting of the working mechanism for consultation & coordination on India-China border affairs (WMCC) in Beijing and discussed proposals for disengagement in the remaining areas of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Eastern Ladakh.

This was the first in-person meeting of the WMCC since July 2019.  Joint Secretary (East Asia) of the Ministry of External Affairs Dr Shilpak Ambule, who headed the Indian delegation, also called on the Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Hua Chunying.

India assumed the presidency of the G20 on December 1 last year. The G20 members represent around 85 per cent of the global GDP, over 75 per cent of the global trade, and about two-thirds of the world population.

The member countries include Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, the UK, and the USA.