Prime Minister Narendra Modi reached China's Qingdao today and attended the two-day Shanghai Cooperation Organisation or SCO summit. Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale said that China had accepted PM Narendra Modi's invitation to Chinese President Xi Jinping to have an informal summit in India in 2019.
Apart from attending the regional summit, PM Modi held bilateral talks with heads of several countries. PM Modi also held a bilateral meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping hours after his arrival. Prime Minister Modi and President Xi will take stock of the implementation of decisions taken at an informal summit last month in China's Wuhan.
Leaders of the eight Shanghai Cooperation Organisation members and four observer nations will attend the summit.
Here are the highlights of PM Modi's China visit for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit:
One of the important outcomes of today's meeting was the Chinese side conveyed that they accepted PM's invitation to President Xi Jinping to have a similar informal summit in India in 2019: Vijay Gokhale, Foreign Secretary pic.twitter.com/CdwKCMeMZi
- ANI (@ANI) June 9, 2018
It is for the first time the Indian prime minister will be attending the SCO summit after India along with Pakistan became full-fledged members of the grouping last year.
The SCO currently has eight member countries which represents around 42 per cent of the world's population and 20 per cent of the global GDP.
India was an observer at the SCO since 2005 and has generally participated in the ministerial-level meetings of the grouping which focus mainly on security and economic cooperation in the Eurasian region.
