Prime Minister Narendra Modi will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping in Brasilia on Wednesday on the sidelines of the 11th BRICS Summit, a week after India pulled out of the 16-nation Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).
China has over the past week said it would work with other countries in the RCEP to address the issues India has with the world’s largest trade deal but none of the statements coming out of Beijing has assured New Delhi about one of the main concerns: Chinese goods further flooding the Indian market as a result of this partnership.
Wednesday’s meeting will be the first one-to-one between the two leaders after their second informal summit at Mamallapuram in Tamil Nadu on October 11 and 12.
The optics of the summit — where India managed to keep differences over Jammu and Kashmir’s bifurcation out of the public statements — had been short-lived.
China’s sharpest statement on the bifurcation since the August 5 decision came on October 31, when the Union Territory of Ladakh came into existence. Beijing called the bifurcation a challenge to its sovereignty while India responded with a reminder that China still occupied a large tract of area in the Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.
