Chinese President Xi Jinping is set to visit India to attend the BRICS summit, which will be held on September 12 and 13.
President Xi last visited New Delhi in 2019. That visit was also to attend the BRICS summit, and he arrived in New Delhi with a delegation of 200 officials.
After a gap of seven years since that visit, the Chinese president is returning to India. This time, his delegation will include 400 officials.
The year after his visit, in June 2020, Indian and Chinese troops became involved in a deadly border clash in Ladakh. The conflict strained bilateral relations between New Delhi and Beijing, with tensions continuing for several years.
Last year, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Beijing. Before that, Modi’s most recent visit to Beijing had been in 2018. It was largely after Modi broke his seven-year gap by visiting Beijing that diplomatic ties between New Delhi and Beijing began to thaw.
-MT