Xi will not attend the BRICS Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported on Wednesday, quoting multiple sources.
Instead, Chinese Premier and Xi’s confidant Li Qiang will take part in the summit to be held on July 6-7 in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi was expected to take part.
The BRICS comprises Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The bloc has been expanded with five additional members Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
The BRICS Summit in Russia’s Kazan last year became significant as both Modi and Xi met there, breaking the four-year deadlock over the frozen bilateral ties due to the standoff at eastern Ladakh.
After their meeting, both sides agreed to revive various bilateral dialogue mechanisms.Following the Modi-Xi talks, the two sides held a series of meetings in the last few months aimed at normalising the bilateral relations.If Xi misses the summit at Rio de Janeiro, the next opportunity for the Xi-Modi meeting could be the SCO summit to be held in China if the Prime Minister attends it.
China, the current chair of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), plans to hold its summit in the next few months.
The news of Xi’s plans to opt out of the Rio Summit reportedly came from Brazil where officials told the media that Beijing informed the Brazilian government that Xi had a scheduling conflict.
During the media briefing on Wednesday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun declined to comment on the reports about Xi’s decision, saying that information on China’s attendance at the BRICS summit would be released in due course.
China supports Brazil’s presidency of the BRICS, Guo said.
While it is unclear why the Chinese President has decided to opt out of the BRICS Summit in Rio, there is a sense of unease in Beijing over Brazil’s decision not to endorse the multi-billion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which is also Xi’s pet initiative.
Brazil is the second country in the BRICS after India which refrained from joining the BRI.
Outlining the reasons for Xi’s reported decision, The Post report quoted Chinese officials that Xi met Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva twice in less than a year – first at the G20 summit and a state visit to Brasilia last November, and again in May during the China-Celac forum in Beijing – as a reason for his absence.
Since he came to power, Xi, who is currently in power for an unprecedented third five-year term, has never missed a BRICS summit, highlighting the importance he attaches to the grouping.
Even during the coronavirus pandemic, he took part in the BRICS virtual summit in 2020.
In Brasilia, officials made no secret of their frustration over Xi’s absence, according to the Post report.
Lula had travelled to Beijing in May as “a gesture of goodwill” and with “the expectation that the Chinese president would reciprocate” by attending the Rio summit, the report said, quoting a Brazilian source.
