New Delhi :
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping next week on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit at Bishkek, India's envoy to China Vikram Misri said on Thursday.
This will be the first meeting between PM Modi and Xi Jinping after the former got re-elected as Prime Minister for the second consecutive term following his party's stunning victory in Lok Sabha Elections 2019.
"In recent years, India and China have been able to build a very mature and stable relationship. The informal summit between Prime Minister Modi and President Xi in Wuhan last year was a milestone and has been instrumental in taking our relations to a new height," Misri said.
“It is worth mentioning that last year, our leaders met four times on the sidelines of different multi-lateral meetings. Next week, they are again meeting in Bishkek on the sidelines of the SCO Summit," he said after inaugurating India's Synthite Industries' 3rd manufacturing facility at Wucheng county in Dezhou in China's Shandong province.
The SCO summit is due to be held on June 13-14 in the Kyrgyzstan capital. The SCO is a China-led 8-member security bloc with India and Pakistan being admitted to the grouping in 2017.
Xi extended his "heartfelt congratulations" to Prime Minister Modi for winning the general elections, in a rare gesture of greeting a foreign leader well before the official announcement of the results.
Misri said the economic and commercial engagement between India and China constitutes a major component of the bilateral relations with bilateral trade which crossed USD 95 billion last year and is set to cross USD 100 billion this year.
In December last year, Prime Minister Modi met President Xi on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Argentina and discussed joint efforts to further enhance mutual trust and friendship between the two giant neighbours.
The April 27-28 Wuhan summit between Prime Minister Modi and President Xi was largely credited to have turned around the bilateral relations soured by the 73-day Doklam standoff, triggered by Chinese troops attempts to build a road close to Indian border in an area also claimed by Bhutan in 2017.
After the Wuhan summit, both the countries stepped up efforts to improve relations on different spheres including the military-to-military ties.
