Chinese President Xi Jinping will have the gathering of more than 20 world leaders beginning the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit later this week in a show of Global South solidarity amid US President Donald Trump’s tariff bomb. China, Russia and India – all three have been on the receiving end of Trump’s tariffs, and have also resisted the blanket statement of the US president on a range of issues including the purchase of Russian oil.
Several leaders from Central Asia, the Middle East, South Asia and Southeast Asia have been invited to the SCO summit, which will be held in Tianjin from August 31 to September 1.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be going for the summit, which will also be his first visit to China in more than seven years during which the two countries saw intense due to deadly border clashes in 2020. However, for the past one and a half years, the Asian neighbours have worked towards improving their ties.
Are India-Russia-China trilateral talks a possibility?
PM Modi will be meeting Chinese president Xi on the sidelines of the summit. He is expected to hold bilateral talks with several others while in China. The PM shared the stage with Xi and Putin last time at the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia. Now, another meeting between the leaders is likely amid changing global order.
BRICS has been another targeting point for Trump, who has said multiple times that he would sanction the countries if they tried to move away from the dollar.
At this juncture, an India-China-Russia talk would be much appreciated by those critical of Trump’s tariffs.
What is expected out of the meet?
A trilateral talk would be both strategic and positive for the three countries as Trump prepares to proceed with his trade plan. “Xi will want to use the summit as an opportunity to showcase what a post-American-led international order begins to look like and that all White House efforts since January to counter China, Iran, Russia, and now India have not had the intended effect,” said Eric Olander, editor-in-chief of The China-Global South Project, a research agency.
“Just look at how much BRICS has rattled (U.S. President) Donald Trump, which is precisely what these groups are designed to do,” he added, referring to Trump’s previous statement on BRICS.
Earlier, a Chinese foreign ministry official said that this year’s summit will be the largest since the SCO was founded in 2001. The official also called the bloc an “important force in building a new type of international relations”.