Xi Jinping to attend SCO summit in Bishkek amid India-China diplomatic thaw

Xi Jinping will visit Kyrgyzstan and join the SCO summit in Bishkek next week. The gathering comes amid renewed India-China engagement and a packed diplomatic month for Beijing.Stock photo used for illustrationChinese President Xi Jinping will attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Bishkek next week during his state visit to Kyrgyzstan from August 30 to September 1, the Chinese Foreign Ministry announced on Wednesday. The summit is expected to be attended by several world leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi.China is the outgoing chair of the SCO and hosted the summit in Tianjin last August. After the Bishkek summit, Kyrgyzstan will take over the presidency of the grouping. After his Kyrgyzstan visit, Xi will travel to Egypt for a bilateral visit.The Modi-Xi meeting on the sidelines of the Tianjin summit had strengthened the normalisation process in India-China ties through steps such as the Kailash-Manasarovar Yatra, easier visas and direct flights to promote people-to-people contact.Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said last year's Tianjin summit had laid out a strategic blueprint for the SCO's development over the next 10 years, taking the organisation into a new stage of high-quality development. At that summit, Xi had also proposed an SCO Development Bank modelled on the BRICS New Development Bank and the Beijing-based Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Lin said that during the Bishkek summit, Xi will exchange in-depth views with leaders of participating countries on deepening cooperation in various fields within the SCO. The SCO member states are Russia, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Belarus and China.September is expected to be a busy month for Xi, who is widely expected to attend the BRICS summit in New Delhi on September 12 and 13 and later travel to the US for a summit meeting with President Donald Trump. Ahead of the BRICS summit, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi held the 25th Special Representatives mechanism talks on the boundary question in Beijing on Tuesday. In a brief statement posted by the Indian Embassy on X, it said: "They discussed ways to further expand bilateral cooperation, maintain stability and ensure peace and tranquillity in the border areas, and make progress on boundary delimitation, while sustaining the ongoing work on transboundary cooperation." The Special Representatives mechanism is seen as a key forum for addressing the 3,488-km India-China border dispute as well as recurring tensions on other bilateral issues.Xi's Bishkek visit will bring together SCO leaders at a summit that comes after China's presidency of the grouping, against the backdrop of recent India-China engagement and an active diplomatic calendar for the Chinese president.With PTI Inputs- EndsPublished By: India Today Web Desk Published On: Aug 26, 2026 17:50 IST