Chinese President Xi Jinping arrives at Cairo International Airport for an official visit to Egypt, in Cairo, Egypt, Sept. 1 (local time). (Reuters)
Chinese President Xi Jinping arrives at Cairo International Airport for an official visit to Egypt, in Cairo, Egypt, Sept. 1 (local time). (Reuters)

Chinese President Xi Jinping will travel to India this weekend to attend the 18th BRICS summit, China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Thursday. The trip will mark Xi's first visit to India since 2019, ending a seven-year gap.

In a statement issued the same day, a ministry spokesperson said Xi would attend the summit in New Delhi at the invitation of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The visit is expected to focus on efforts to stabilize relations between the two countries, which deteriorated after a deadly clash between Chinese and Indian troops in the Himalayan border region in 2020.

The two countries have sought to normalize ties by expanding high-level exchanges since agreeing in 2024 to withdraw troops from the disputed border area.

Modi visited China last year for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Tianjin, where he held talks with Xi. Since then, the two countries have expanded people-to-people and economic exchanges, including resuming direct flights, though a full-scale improvement in relations has remained slow.

Last month, the two sides held a special representatives' meeting on the border issue in Beijing. The meeting was attended by Wang Yi, director of the Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs of the Communist Party of China and concurrently foreign minister, and Indian National Security Adviser Ajit Doval. The two sides agreed to keep pursuing a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable solution while maintaining peace and stability along the border.

However, observers generally note that considerable tensions remain between the two countries, including the unresolved border dispute and India's restrictions on investment and business operations by Chinese companies.

India, which holds the BRICS chairmanship this year, is expected to focus the summit's agenda on economic and financial cooperation among member states and on expanding the role of the Global South, a term referring largely to emerging economies and developing countries in the Southern Hemisphere.

BRICS has grown since its founding in 2010 by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa into a broader multilateral bloc of emerging economies, later joined by Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, the UAE and Indonesia.


yckim6452@heraldcorp.com