Why China’s President Xi Jinping is not attending G20 Summit in India? Explained

Source: Mint | Original Published At: 2023-09-05 04:27:34 UTC

Key Points

• Chinese President Xi Jinping skips G20 Summit in India, first such absence since 2008
• Analysts suggest reasons including focus on domestic security and symbolic alignment with BRICS over G20
• Absence interpreted as potential diplomatic snub to India amid ongoing border tensions

Chinese Premier Li Qiang will attend the G20 Summit in India which is scheduled to take place on September 9 and 10 in the national capital, instead of President Xi Jinping. That would make him the second major leader after Russia’s President Vladimir Putin to skip the event.

This will be the first time that a Chinese president has missed a leaders’ summit since the first edition was held in 2008, though in 2020 and 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Xi attended virtually.

Wen-Ti Sung, political scientist at the Australian National University, pointed out that Xi had joined a meeting in South Africa last month of leaders of the BRICS group of major emerging economies, Reuters reported.

“Xi’s skipping the West-heavy club of G20 right after attending the BRICS summit may be a visual illustration of Xi’s narrative of ‘East is rising, and the West is falling’, as well as showing solidarity with Russia’s President Putin who is also not attending,” Sung said.

On the other hand, Alfred Wu, associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore believes that Xi might be reluctant to travel abroad, given his focus on domestic issues.

“Xi Jinping is setting his own agenda where his top concern is national security and he has to stay in China and make foreign leaders visit him instead,” Wu told Reuters.

Some analysts also said that Xi’s absence from the G20 gathering could also be seen as a snub of host India.

They said it could be a signal that China is unwilling to confer influence on its southern neighbor that boasts one of the fastest-growing major economies while China’s slows, as per Reuters reports.

Ties between India and China have been also troubled for more than three years after soldiers from both sides clashed on their disputed Himalayan frontier in June 2020, resulting in 24 deaths.