China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Thursday made a surprise visit to Kabul, travelling to the Afghan capital for meetings before landing in Delhi on Thursday night. Both visits had been kept completely secret, and neither Delhi nor Beijing have formally issued any statement on Mr. Wang’s travels to India yet.
On Friday, Mr. Wang is due to meet with External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval to discuss the way forward in resolving the two year old military stand-off at the Line of Actual Control and PLA transgressions along the LAC. Mr. Wang is also expected to extend an invitation to the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (BRICS) summit in Beijing this year, as well as the situation in Ukraine, before flying to Kathmandu for the next leg of his South Asia tour, which began in Islamabad on Tuesday. However, it is unclear whether Prime Minister Narendra Modi will meet Mr. Wang, as the Chinese side that proposed the visit, had requested.
Mr. Wang arrived in Delhi a day after the Ministry of External Affairs sharply rebuked his comments at the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Pakistan, where he referred to “sharing hopes for Kashmir”, a statement that appeared to cast a cloud over his visit to Delhi amidst deep tensions between India and China on a large number of other issues.
