China’s foreign minister Qin Gang to visit India to attend G20 meet in New Delhi

China announced that their foreign minister Qin Gang would be visiting India for this week’s G20 meeting, the first visit of such high-level from China in almost one year. He will be attending the G20 foreign ministers meeting in New Delhi on March 2nd.

Qin Gang is expected to have a meeting with S Jaishankar where they will discuss the situation at the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the eastern Ladakh area, they would also evaluate the results of the diplomatic and military talks which were recently held to resolve boundary tension.

The Chinese foreign ministry announced in a brief statemet that “at the invitation of Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang will attend the G20 Foreign Ministers conference in New Delhi, India on March 2.”

“As the main forum for international economic cooperation, the G20 should focus on addressing outstanding challenges in the field of international economy and development and play a greater role in promoting world economic recovery and global development,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, Mao Ning stated this.

Foreign ministers will meet In New Delhi this week amidst the situation of Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine and increasingly tense US-China tensions. 

Last year in March Chines foreign minister Wang Yi visited India and during the meeting with Jaishankar, Wang stated that both the countries should put the border dispute in its “proper place” and not allow the dispute to “define” or “affect” overall bilateral ties. According to Lin Minwang, deputy director of Shanghai University’s Institute of South Asia Studies stated that “this (Qin’s visit) can be regarded as support for India’s multilateral diplomatic activities.”

After last week’s talks both sides have discussed on how to create conditions to “restore normalcy” in relations between the countries.