Editorial: Conspicuous by his absence
Chinese President Xi Jinping skipping the G20 summit indicates that India-China ties are likely to remain in cold storage
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s decision to skip the upcoming G20 summit, being hosted by India, is a reflection of Beijing’s strained relationship with both the United States and India and also an indication of the domestic problems on the economic front. In sharp contrast, a string of bilateral agreements and announcements are lined up as US President Joe Biden is travelling to New Delhi for the summit and has a scheduled meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi amid deepening defence ties between the two countries. The absence of Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin at the summit makes India’s job in finding a consensus at the G20 communique much tougher. Though Chinese Premier Li Qiang is attending the summit, the negotiating space for his country’s delegation would be far narrower compared to what it would have been if Xi had led the delegation. Since assuming the Presidency of the G20 last December, India has been working hard at every ministerial and working group level meeting to find a middle ground between the two divergent positions held by Russia and China on one hand and the Western countries on the other. The Ukraine war has divided and polarised the G20 grouping. While Russia and China have objected to the formulation used in the G20 Bali declaration last year, the West, led by the G7 grouping, has sought to reiterate the Bali declaration which condemned the Russian invasion saying it was causing immense human suffering and exacerbating existing fragilities in the global economy.
Xi may have chosen to skip the event to avoid coming face-to-face with Biden at a time when the Sino-US relations have taken a rocky turn with Washington no longer giving Beijing a free pass on trade, technology and geopolitical issues. His absence also indicates that India-China ties are likely to remain in cold storage. During the one-on-one informal meeting with Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Johannesburg last month, Modi was said to have conveyed India’s concerns over the festering border dispute. Though the Indian government had said that the two leaders had directed the officials to ensure expeditious disengagement, the Chinese did not say so in their official statement after the meeting. Though 19 rounds of Corps Commander-level talks between India and China have been held over the past three years, a resolution remains elusive. The unresolved border tension has led to an unprecedented build-up of troops on both sides. The onus of de-escalation of border tensions and normalisation of bilateral ties now lies with China. Another reason for Xi’s absence could be the growing domestic pressure as the Chinese economy is sputtering and posing a big challenge to his political agenda of centralising power in the Chinese Communist Party. Travelling abroad at this sensitive juncture may prove uncomfortable for him.
