External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar will travel to Tianjin, China, next week to attend the foreign ministers’ meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), nearly two weeks after Defence Minister Rajnath Singh visited the country for the SCO defence ministers’ summit.
“The Meeting of the Council of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the SCO will be held in Tianjin on July 15,” a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said in an official statement on Saturday, news agency PTI reported.
Jaishankar will also pay a bilateral visit to China during the trip, though details of that visit were not specified.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry noted that foreign ministers of SCO member states and heads of the bloc’s permanent bodies “will exchange views on SCO cooperation in various fields and major international and regional issues.”
The SCO includes 10 members: China, Russia, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Belarus.
This will be Jaishankar’s first visit to China since the 2020 military standoff along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh, which severely strained bilateral ties.
The diplomatic engagement
Rajnath Singh was in Qingdao last month for the SCO defence ministers’ meeting, where he met Chinese Defence Minister Gen Dong Jun on June 26.
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During those talks, Singh proposed a “structured roadmap” to de-escalate tensions and rejuvenate border demarcation mechanisms. He stressed the importance of “taking action on the ground” to bridge the “trust deficit” from the 2020 standoff and called for creating “good neighbourly conditions” for mutual benefit.
As per a report by PTI, responding to Singh’s remarks, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said: “The boundary question is complicated, and it takes time to settle it.”
The two countries completed disengagement from Demchok and Depsang in October 2021, effectively ending the border face-off.
The decision to revive talks, including the SR mechanism, was taken during the Modi-Xi Jinping meeting in Kazan, Russia, on October 23, just days after the disengagement pact was sealed.
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In recent months, both countries have taken several steps to improve ties, including the resumption of the Kailash Manasarovar Yatra after a nearly five-year gap.
