Modi, Xi shake hands at G20 Summit side event; first time since Galwan clash

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping exchanged courtesies during the G20 summit at Bali in Indonesia on Tuesday – the first such engagement between the two leaders after the military stand-off along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh started in April-May 2020.

Modi and Xi are attending the 17th G20 summit, along with leaders of the 17 other nations and the European Union. They shook hands and exchanged courtesies at the end of the welcome dinner hosted by Indonesian President Joko Widodo at Garuda Wisnu Kencana Cultural Park in Bali on Tuesday.

Xi extended his hand to Modi after thanking Widodo for his hospitality. Modi too responded to Xi’s gestures warmly and the two leaders were seen smiling as they spoke to each other briefly. Xi was accompanied by his wife Peng Liyuan and other officials of the Chinese government. Modi had by his side External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and an official, who was apparently taking notes of the brief exchanges between the two leaders and also playing the role of an interpreter.

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There was no official word either from New Delhi or from Beijing on what the two leaders discussed.

A source in New Delhi described the encounter as exchange of courtesies.

It is being seen as the first sign of thaw between Modi and Xi after the stand-off between the Indian Army and Chinese People’s Liberation Army in eastern Ladakh.

But no formal bilateral meeting between the two leaders has so far been scheduled on the sideline of the G20 summit in Bali.

The Prime Minister had a bilateral meeting with the United States President Joe Biden on the sideline of the conclave on Tuesday. He has eight bilateral meetings scheduled before his departure from Bali on Wednesday – with his counterparts in France, Germany, Singapore, Australia, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and the host Indonesia.

Modi and Xi had an informal summit at a seaside resort at Mamallapuram in Tamil Nadu in October 2019. It was a sequel to the first informal summit that had been held at Wuhan in central China in April 2018. They last had a bilateral meeting on the sideline of the BRICS summit in Brasilia in November 2019. The two leaders, however, had no such bilateral engagement in the past three years, as the stand-off along the LAC, particularly the clash at Galwan Valley on June 15, 2020, brought the relations between the two nations to a new low.

They also attended the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s summit at Samarkand in Uzbekistan on September 15 and 16 this year. But neither they had any bilateral meeting on the sideline of the conclave, nor any exchange of pleasantries came to public domain – unlike the one in Bali on Tuesday.

Modi will take over G20 presidency from Widodo at the end of the bloc’s 17th summit on Wednesday. He will host the 18th summit in September 2023.

New Delhi is expected to invite Xi, not only for the G20 summit, but also for the SCO summit, which will also be hosted by Modi next year.

The disengagement of troops in Gogra-Hotsprings (Patrolling Point 15) area on the LAC between September 8 to 12 did end an impasse in the protracted negotiations to resolve the stand-off. It came almost a year after the two sides had mutually withdrawn troops from Gogra Post (Patrolling Point 17A) in August 2021. Earlier, the Indian Army and the Chinese PLA had mutually withdrawn troops from Galwan Valley in June 2020 and from the northern bank of Pangong Tso in February 2021.

After the disengagement of troops by the two sides from PP15 between September 8 and 12, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar acknowledged it as “one problem less on border”, thus tacitly underlining that the more than two-year-long stand-off along the LAC – the de facto boundary between the two nations – was not over yet.

The Chinese PLA continues to block the Indian Army’s access to Patrol Points 10, 11, 12, 12A and 13 by deploying troops in Depsang Bulge, well inside the territory of India along the country’s LAC with China. A similar face-off also continues in Demchok on the LAC.

The two sides are likely to hold a meeting of the military commanders to continue negotiations to resolve the remaining issues along the LAC.