China's Wang Yi likely to visit India this month

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is likely to visit India later this month for the India-China Special Representatives (SR) level talks. This will be the 24th round of the SR talks, and comes after the 23rd round of SR talks that took place in Beijing last year. The mechanism was initiated following a proposal by then-Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee during his 2003 visit to China, and aims to explore a political framework for resolving the boundary issue.

This will be the second visit of the Chinese foreign minister to India since the 2020 Galwan clashes, the last being in March 2022. The upcoming visit of the Chinese FM, which is underway, comes even as both India and China aim to normalise ties after the Kazan meeting between PM Modi, and Chinese President Xi Jinping. As part of the normalisation of ties, focus is on the resumption of the people-to-people ties including the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra. Both sides are also looking at cooperation on the sharing of river water data, resumption of direct air services, and exchanges between media and think-tanks.

Ties between the 2 Asian neighbours were on a free fall since the Galwan clashes of 2020. India's increased worry has been China's support to Pakistan, a country that has been supporting cross-border terrorism against India and is seen as a destabilizing factor in the region as well. Pakistan has one of the largest numbers of its nationals listed as terrorists on the UN's international terror list.

Last month the Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh had visited China for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation or SCO meetings. China is the host of the grouping for this year and will be hosting the summit at the end of August. In mid-July, it hosts the SCO Foreign Ministers meeting, for which India's external affairs Minister (EAM) Dr S Jaishankar is expected to travel to China. EAM is likely to hold a meeting with the host Chinese foreign minister, the Russian and Central Asian counterparts.

This will be the first time Indian, Pakistani foreign ministers will be under the same roof since the Pahalgam terror attack by Pakistan-trained terrorists and the May conflict. No meeting is scheduled to take place between the 2 foreign ministers given Rawalpindi's support to cross-border terrorism.