Chinese President Xi Jinping will not attend G20 summit

Among the guests attending the G-20 summit being led by India, official information was given by China that Chinese President Xi Jinping will not attend it.

Now, in place of President Xi Jinping, China will be represented by Premier Li Qiang at the G-20 summit.

• The possibility of cancellation of Xi Jinping's visit to India was already being expressed. However, China has now officially confirmed this, but has not given the reason behind the cancellation of this visit.
• In this context, it is being speculated that President Xi Jinping may visit Indonesia's capital Jakarta to attend the ASEAN Summit on 8-9 September 2023.

Li Qiang will represent China in G-20:

• Regarding participation in the G-20 summit, China has officially informed the Indian side that the delegation of the G-20 summit will be led by Prime Minister Li Qiang.

Russian President Putin will also be absent in the G-20 conference:

• President Xi Jinping is the second leader who, despite being a member of G-20, is not participating in this conference.
• Before this, Russian President Vladimir Putin had refused to join G-20. In his place, Russia will be represented by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

Reason for Russian President not coming to India:

• The President of Russia had not even attended the BRICS summit held in August and was also not a part of the G-20 conference held in Bali last year, but due to good relations with India, there were speculations that Putin would- 20 will be required to come to India to attend the conference.
• Russia has expressed its inability to participate in the conference being held in India citing the Ukraine war as the reason. In this context, after the arrest warrant issued against Putin by the International Criminal Court, he is avoiding his foreign tours.
• However, it is also believed that Putin is going to visit China and this will be Putin's first foreign visit after the arrest warrant was issued.

Some possible reasons for Xi Jinping not coming to India:

• China fears that Xi Jinping is unlikely to receive a particularly warm welcome at the G20 due to India-China tensions.
• Many European countries are angry over China's support to Russia after the invasion of Ukraine.
• In such a situation, western countries can also criticise China in front of Xi Jinping.
• America is also continuously aggressive against China and is forming a separate group with Japan, South Korea and the European Union countries to counter Beijing's aggression.

Apart from this, the border dispute with India, Putin's non-involvement, China and America going through a trade war, the issue of Global South, etc. are such issues from which President Jinping has considered it in his best interest not to come to India.