New Delhi: With no joint statements or agreements, the forthcoming “informal” summit between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping will not be “issue-based”, but rather broad-based to foster “strategic communication” at the highest political level.
This was stated by both Indian and Chinese sources on Tuesday, ahead of the summit that will take place on April 27 and 28 in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.
The announcement of the summit was made by the Indian and Chinese foreign ministers on Sunday. This would be third stand-alone meeting between Modi and Xi, after their joint sojourns in Ahmedabad and Xian in 2014 and 2015 respectively.
The reason this summit has been prefixed with the term ‘informal’ is to make it less protocol-heavy, Indian official sources said.
A formal summit usually involves talks across table, with the two leaders first reading out an opening statement after which issues are then picked up from the agenda. Typically, a joint declaration would already have been negotiated before the leaders meet and would be ready to be released to the media. The signing of pre-negotiated agreements also tend to be part of the complicated but predictable summit choreography.
The Wuhan meeting later this week will be different. “Both sides have agreed not to sign an agreement or release any joint document but reach important consensus to resolve outstanding issues,” said Chinese vice foreign minister Kong Xuanyou in Beijing on Tuesday.
In Delhi, the description about the forthcoming summit is similar, but with a slight nuance.
Noting that the format was still “in flux”, sources here said that there would be no deliverables in the form of either agreements, joint statements or press communiques.
Unlike earlier meetings where hot-button issues were flagged in advance by the Indian side, officials here are essentially signalling in advance that they do not expect any resolution of existing differences like Indian membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group or support for Indian efforts to get the UN to blacklist Pakistan-based terrorists.
Anybody who knows China knows that its leadership does not discuss specific issues, sources here noted.
The “objective” is to have “strategic communication” at the highest level on the perspective that each leader has on both domestic, as well as, foreign policy issues. It is believed that discussions will be “informal, broad-based, overarching in content and will not be specific in terms of its topics”.
The Wuhan meeting stands in stark contrast to the Modi-Xi meeting in Tashkent in June 2016, when the Indian prime minister specifically sought the Chinese leader’s backing for Indian membership of the NSG.
According to sources here, the purpose now is for the two leaders to understand the vision or domestic policy intentions of the other leader and how it shapes the external environment of that country. But there could also be some talks on how to “remove misconceptions and misunderstanding that may arise”.
These discussions will be one-on-one and sometimes with a small number of officials, but not across the table. There will be no formal read-outs or note-takers present at the meeting, the sources added.
The ‘informal’ summit takes place just a month before the annual meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in Qingdao, for which the Indian prime minister will again travel to China.
Sources said that the unusual timing of the Wuhan summit was due to the desire of both leaders to “devote” some more time to developing their personal relationship. On the margins of the SCO summit, the maximum period for bilateral discussions would perhaps have been half an hour.
Repeatedly stressing the agenda-less nature of the meeting, the sources characterised the “key outcome” of the informal summit was to build up communication channels at the leadership level to reach an understanding in an informal atmosphere.
However, the sources were sceptical about whether the summit would impact India’s relation with the neighbourhood, especially Pakistan. In fact, there was a categorical assertion that there is no likelihood of the SAARC summit being held this year.
While the ‘informal’ summit will take place after a period of prolonged strain last year over Doklam, it was pointed out that the meeting was not a ‘reset’ in India-China ties as is being described in several media reports.
As far as New Delhi is concerned, the Doklam ‘resolution’ at the face-off site still continues to hold, and that Chinese side has not resumed the road construction that would have impacted the location of the Bhutan-India-China tri-junction.
Sources here also insist the advisory issued by foreign secretary Vijay Gokhale asking officials to keep off the 60th anniversary celebrations of the Dalai Lama’s exile to India was not specifically related to the ‘thaw’ in ties.
The sources said that India’s Tibet policy was laid out in the India-China joint statement of 1988, which meant that any event to mark the anniversary would have been political in nature. The advisory was only a reiteration of policy followed by all governments over the years, sources said, adding that the decision to change the venue and date of the main event was taken by the Tibetan authorities.
However, foreign policy analysts and former diplomats dispute this claim, pointing to instances when the Modi government appeared to favour a rethink of tactics on the Tibet question. Unlike during the tenure of earlier governments, the head of the Tibetan ‘government in exile’ was invited to Narendra Modi’s swearing in ceremony in May 2014. Later, Tibetan activists were allowed to unfurl their flag at Pangong Su in Ladakh, again a departure from earlier government policy.
Analysts see Gokhale’s memo as a definite attempt by New Delhi to dial back on those elements of official policy, presumably to create in Beijing the comfort level required for the two sides to make a fresh start as Wuhan.