China’s leader Xi shuns G-20, Tinubu, Biden attend India summit

President Bola Tinubu on Monday travelled to New Delhi, India, to attend the G-20 Leaders’ Summit.
But China’s leader Xi Jinping will miss the important gathering of the world’s 20 top economies for the first time.
Xi’s absence from the summit is coming as tensions simmer between China and host country India over their disputed border and New Delhi’s growing ties with the United States.

Tinubu’s spokesman, Ajuri Ngelale, said this in a statement on the Nigeria’s President would be attending the summit in India on the special invitation of Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi.

“On the sidelines of the Summit, the President will participate in and deliver keynote addresses at both the Nigeria-India Presidential Roundtable and the Nigeria-India Business Conference,” the statement partly read.
The executive roundtable is expected to be attended by leading industrialists in the Indian private sector, Nigerian industrialists, as well as senior government officials from both countries.
“The President aims to leverage this platform to attract global capital and promote increased foreign direct investments in key labour-intensive sectors of Nigeria’s economy for job creation and revenue expansion.
“Moreover, he will use this opportunity to highlight Nigeria’s attractiveness as an investment destination, specifically outlining his cross-sectoral reform plan as encapsulated by the Renewed Hope Agenda,” Ngelale said.

At the G20 Summit, the Nigerian leader is expected to share Nigeria’s perspective on the theme, ‘One Earth-One Family-One Future’ with focus on global unity required to address the challenges facing humanity and the planet.

“While Nigeria’s membership of the G-20 is desirable, the government has embarked on wide-ranging consultations with a view to ascertaining the benefits and risks of membership.

“Once consultations are concluded, the government will decide whether or not to apply to join as appropriate. The participation of President Tinubu at the G-20 Summit in India is, in part, in furtherance of this objective.”
In China, questions about Xi’s attendance at the meeting were first raised last week when Reuters reported the Chinese leader was likely to miss it, citing two unnamed Indian diplomats.
At a regular news conference Monday, China’s Foreign Ministry said Li would attend the summit on Saturday and Sunday, without mentioning Xi.
Mao Ning, a spokesperson for the ministry, sidestepped a question from a reporter about the reason for Xi’s non-attendance – which would be the first time China top’s leader has missed a G20 Summit.

“The Group of 20 is a major forum for international economic cooperation, and China has always attached great importance to and actively participated in relevant activities,” Mao said, without addressing the substance of the question.
Even during the Covid pandemic, Xi attended the meetings in 2020 and 2021 by video link.
Beijing’s announcement has dashed hopes that Xi and US President Joe Biden might meet at the summit, as the two superpowers seek to stabilize their rocky relations.
Preempting confirmation from Beijing, Biden on Sunday publicly expressed disappointment that he would not see Xi in New Delhi.
“I am disappointed – but I’m going to get to see him,” Biden told reporters on Sunday.
Biden had previously told CNN he would be meeting with Xi in “the fall.”
The two leaders last spoke in person in November 2022 on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Bali, where they pledged to restore channels of communication in an effort to prevent rising tensions from spilling into open conflict. That meeting is the only time the two have met in person since Biden took office.
Four US cabinet officials have visited Beijing in recent months, after a suspected Chinese spy balloon derailed a fledgling effort at rapprochement earlier in the year.
Xi’s absence from the G20 summit also means he will not have a formal bilateral meeting with Indian Prime Minister Modi, as the two nuclear-powered neighbours remain at loggerheads over their contested border.
Xi and Modi agreed to “intensify efforts” to deescalate tensions at the border last month on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in South Africa – which was seen as a step toward mending their fraught relationship.
But tensions rose again last week when India lodged a “strong protest” against China’s newly published national map, which it said included the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh and the disputed Aksai-Chin plateau in Chinese territory.
The disputed border has been a source of friction between New Delhi and Beijing, with the agitation spilling into a 1962 war that ended in a Chinese victory.
Tensions rose again in 2020 after a deadly brawl in the Galwan Valley resulted in the deaths of 20 Indian soldiers and four Chinese.