Hindustan Times, New Delhi :
India and Japan have restarted discussions to firm up dates for the annual summit between prime ministers Narendra Modi and Shinzo Abe, possibly around October. The summit is expected to focus on an expansionist China that has been attempting to change the status quo on its borders with India, and in the East China Sea around the Senkaku Islands, people familiar with the development told Hindustan Times.
The Modi-Abe summit, initially scheduled to be held last December in Guwahati, was put off due to protests in Assam over the passage of Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) law. Discussions on the next date were paused after the virus that originated in China spread across the world soon after, killing over 600,000 people and grounding the world economy.
But as the world suffered, China’s Xi Jinping went on an overdrive to expand its territory in the South China Sea and its land border with India. It has lately initiated the process to get its army to disengage along the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh but the troop withdrawal process has been a slow and deliberate process.
A defence white paper by the Shinzo Abe government released this week counted China’s aggressive moves in the East China Sea and the South China Sea and its “relentless attempts” to alter status quo by coercion as a key concern.
