ISTANBUL
Amid an ongoing military standoff on the border, China’s Defense Minister Li Shangfu will travel to India this week to participate in a summit with his counterparts from Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) to discuss international and regional issues.
Chinese Defense Ministry said Li will attend the SCO defense chiefs’ summit in New Delhi on Thursday and Friday.
The ministry said Li will deliver a speech at the conference, and also meet with the heads of delegations of “relevant countries to exchange views on international and regional situations, defense and security cooperation and other issues.”
It will be Li’s second overseas trip since being promoted to China’s top defense position last month. Early this month, he paid his maiden trip to Russia.
Whether or not Li will hold an official bilateral meeting with his Indian counterpart Rajnath Singh is not confirmed yet but the visit by the Chinese defense chief to New Delhi assumes significance as the militaries of the two Asian neighbors are yet to fully disengage along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Ladakh area of disputed Jammu and Kashmir.
At least 24 soldiers, 20 from the Indian side, were killed when the two militaries fought, without firearms, at the LAC in June 2020. The standoff, which began in May 2020, continues.
The last time China's defense chief visited India was in August 2018, when Li’s predecessor General Wei Fenghe paid a four-day visit to New Delhi.
It was the first trip that took place after the Doklam standoff – at the trijunction border among Bhutan, India and China – between the two nations.
The SCO is made up of eight member countries, which include India, Russia, China, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.
The members discuss matters of regional concern, security, growth, and multilateral relations. The organization focuses on promoting economic, political, and military cooperation among its members.
Interestingly, Pakistan, a close ally of China, was yet to confirm the participation of its defense chief at the SCO summit.
Islamabad, however, has said its top diplomat Bilawal Bhutto Zardari will attend the SCO Foreign Ministers’ Summit early next month.
2 sides ‘agree to maintain security, stability’
Ahead of Li’s India trip, the two militaries held their 18th round of China-India Corps Commander Level Meeting at the Chushul-Moldo border meeting point on the Chinese side on April 23.
China’s Defense Ministry said on Tuesday: “The two sides had a friendly and candid exchange of views on relevant issues.”
“Under the guidance of the leaders of the two countries and based on the achievements of the meeting between the two foreign ministers, both sides agreed to maintain close contact and dialogue through military and diplomatic channels, speed up the settlement of relevant issues on the western section of the China-India boundary, and continue to safeguard the peace and tranquility in the border areas,” the ministry said.
A day earlier, a similar Indian readout of the meeting said: “The two sides agreed to maintain the security and stability on the ground in the Western Sector.”
It added the two sides agreed to “work out a mutually acceptable resolution of the remaining issues at the earliest.”
From Beijing, Einar Tangen, a senior fellow at the Taihe Institute, told Anadolu that Li's India visit "demonstrates China's commitment to the SCO."
Beijing "shows that its defense minister is welcome outside the US, and making it clear that it is interested in a solution to the border issues," Tangen said.
Li was blacklisted by Washington for leading Beijing's defense dealings with Moscow in the past.
On whether the trip will break the diplomatic impasse between Beijing and New Delhi, Tangen cautioned: "Do not expect a breakthrough, as Li's portfolio is defense, not diplomacy, but there could be substantive talks about military issues, as a preamble to a foreign ministers’ (Qin Gang and S. Jaishankar) meeting, and then a Xi (Jinping)-(Narendra) Modi summit."
India will host the SCO leaders' summit later this year.
"Optics matter at a time when India is feeling pressure from the US over ‘values’ and ‘governance’, and has openly gotten closer to Russia," Tangen told Anadolu. "A geopolitical pantomime is taking place as India’s population is about to surpass China's."
‘Bilateral disputes must not affect normal working of SCO’
According to Sarral Sharma, a New Delhi-based security analyst, bilateral disputes “must not affect the normal working of important regional/multilateral groupings like (the) SCO.”
“The SCO moot in India (the host nation) is not a bilateral dialogue between India and Pakistan, but a regional one,” he said. “There are pressing issues like growing terrorism and the situation in Afghanistan to be discussed at the SCO meetings.”
Pointing out bilateral tensions between India and Pakistan have regularly played out at multilateral forums like the UN or the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation, Sharma told Anadolu: “But so have disputes between the Western countries and Russia (or China), especially since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war in February 2022.”
He said: “Pakistan had skipped certain in-person SCO meetings."
But Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Bilawal Zardari’s “confirmed participation at the SCO meet … can be seen as a positive sign,” Sharma said.
India is scheduled to host SCO top diplomats in western Goa city on May 04 and 05.
The SCO chief justice meeting hosted by India in New Delhi between March 10-12 was not attended by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan. It was attended by another justice.
Sharma, however, said: "There is no guarantee that the SCO meet in Goa will not see diplomatic flare-ups between India and Pakistan on contentious bilateral issues.”
Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang is also expected to participate in the Goa summit.
After his promotion last December, Qin has already paid a visit to India early this year to attend G20 Foreign Ministers’ meeting and separately met his Indian counterpart S. Jaishankar, who told him: “There are real problems in (the) relationship that need to be looked at, that need to be discussed very openly and candidly between us.”
Abdul Basit, a former Pakistani diplomat, told Anadolu from Islamabad while the SCO member states cannot abandon any summit, “Pakistan should have downgraded the participation at the foreign ministers’ summit (in Goa).”
“The participating members do not raise bilateral issues (at the SCO level),” Basit said.
But, he added: “There is no requirement that the participation must be at the level of foreign minister … downgrading it would send a message to Kashmiris, India, and the SCO itself that Pakistan has an international dispute with New Delhi.”
*Anadolu staff contributed to this report.
