Here in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, the Russian state news service Tass reported on Wednesday that President Xi Jinping will go abroad for the first time since January 2020 to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
It has been reported by Russia’s envoy, Andrey Denisov, that Xi and Putin will meet in Samarkand for the SCO summit. The Russian embassy in Beijing was where he made the statement to the press.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be attending the SCO summit on the 15th and 16th of September.
It is unclear if Modi and Xi will meet on the margins of the SCO conference, given the setting of the worst thaw in bilateral relations in decades.
The eleventh BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) summit was held in Brazil this past November.
According to Denisov, China and Russia worked together to prepare for the Xi-Putin meeting.
It was said that Denisov said, in the Tass article, “We are currently in the process of planning with our Chinese friends a true, fully-fledged summit of our leaders with a specified agenda.
“In fewer than 10 days, our SCO leaders will convene in Samarkand for their regularly scheduled session. Considering that it would be the first official meeting since the pandemic, Denisov thinks it will be an interesting event.
The foreign ministry of Kazakhstan announced earlier this week that Xi and Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev will meet on September 14.
Aybek Smadiyarov, spokesperson for the Kazakh foreign ministry, said in a statement that “on the invitation of the president of state, a state visit of the chairman of the People’s Republic of China to the Republic of Kazakhstan is set for September.”
On Wednesday, Mao Ning, a spokeswoman for China’s Foreign Ministry, said, “On your question, I have nothing to share.” This was in response to a reporter asking about the trip to Uzbekistan.
If the trips go forward as planned, Xi will be making his first international journey since the third week of 2020, when he briefly visited Myanmar.
China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan are the eight members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which was founded in June 2001.
Li Zhanshu, China’s third-ranking official, is expected to meet Putin outside of an economic meeting in Vladivostok on the same day that the Russian embassy in Beijing confirmed Xi’s travel. Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine hasn’t dampened the friendly relations between the two countries, as seen by this, the highest-level meeting between the two nations since the attack.
Additionally, Li is the first high-ranking Chinese official to leave the country since the Covid-19 pandemic began in January of 2020.
Since the pandemic, China has limited its in-person diplomacy; Xi met with a large number of world leaders for the first time during the opening of the Winter Olympics in Beijing in February, after a delay of two years.
From September 7-17, Li, the most senior politician in China and the leader of the National People’s Congress, will travel abroad for official visits to Russia, Mongolia, Nepal, and the Republic of Korea (South Korea’s formal name).
Li told Denisov last week that Beijing is looking forward to working with Russia to further their friendship and mutual development.
Li told Xinhua that the two countries are headed in the right way thanks to the strategic direction, mutual support, and continued political confidence of their respective leaders.
When he said, “The new century of China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination has revealed deeper meaning, manifesting the particular merit of the two nations,” he meant it. “By working together closely on both strategic and operational levels.”
