China’s Xi Jinping pledges support for India on plans to host SCO summit in 2023

New Delhi: Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday congratulated India on its plans to host the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit next year and said that Beijing would extend all possible support for the country’s endeavour to chair the regional meet.

“We will support India for its presidency next year,” Xi Jinping said on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit currently being held at Samarkand in Uzbekistan.

This is the first time that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and China’s Xi Jinping have met face-to-face at a global summit since the military standoff between the two Asian giants that began with a clash among soldiers of the Indian Army and China’s People’s Liberation Army in Ladakh’s Galwaan Valley in June 2020.

At the SCO summit, PM Modi pitched India as an emerging manufacturing hub and urged member nations to come together to create resilient supply chains and regional infrastructure to reshape the global world order in a post-pandemic world.

India is likely to be part of a bilateral meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin as well as heads of state of Uzbekistan and Iran. Despite speculations, there are no confirmed reports of an official bilateral meet between India and China. Neither country has confirmed any such meeting.

India remains the frontrunner to host the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in 2023, which is likely to see the process of Iran becoming a full-fledged member of the grouping being initiated.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is an influential eight-member regional grouping with China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan being its six founding members. It was only later, in 2017 that neighbours India and Pakistan joined the SCO.

The ongoing summit at Samarkand in Uzbekistan is the 22^nd regional meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation since its inception in Shanghai in June 2001.

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