Chinese President Xi Jinping will skip this week’s G20 summit in India as bilateral relations remain icy between the two countries.
Premier Li Qiang will attend in his place, China’s foreign ministry said.
A notice on the ministry’s website said: “At the invitation of the government of the Republic of India, Premier of the State Council Li Qiang will attend the 18th G20 Summit to be held in New Delhi, India on September 9 and 10.”
Relations between China and India have grown frosty over their disputed border that three years ago resulted in a violent clash between their troops, resulting in the deaths of 20 Indian soldiers and four Chinese.
They have also clashed over trade and India’s growing strategic ties with China’s main regional rival the United States.
India recently overtook China as the world’s most populous nation and the two are rivals in technology, space exploration and global trade.
Chinese and Indian military commanders met just last month and pledged to “maintain the peace and tranquillity” along their disputed border, in an apparent effort by the sides to stabilise the situation.
The Line of Actual Control separates Chinese- and Indian-held territories from Ladakh in the west to India’s eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims in its entirety.
India and China fought a war over their border in 1962. As its name suggests, the line divides the areas of physical control rather than territorial claims.
According to India, the de facto border is 2,167 miles long, but China promotes a considerably shorter figure.
In all, China claims some 35,000 square miles of territory in India’s north-east, including Arunachal Pradesh with its mainly Buddhist population.
India says China occupies 15,000 square miles of its territory in the Aksai Chin Plateau, which India considers part of Ladakh, where the current face-off is happening.
China, in the meantime, began cementing relations with India’s arch-rival Pakistan and backing it on the issue of disputed Kashmir.
Firefights broke out again in 1967 and 1975, leading to more deaths on both sides. They have since adopted protocols, including an agreement not to use firearms, but those protocols have fractured.
Other than the potential effects on China-India relations, Mr Xi’s absence at the summit will also eliminate the possibility of an interaction with US President Joe Biden.
Chinese-US relations remain at a historic low despite recent visits by US secretary of state Antony Blinken and other officials to Beijing.
Speculation had churned for days that Mr Xi would not attend, and even before China’s official announcement, Mr Biden told reporters on Sunday he did not expect a meeting with the Chinese leader.
“I am disappointed, but I am going to get to see him,” Mr Biden said.
It is not clear when such a meeting could take place as a question mark now hangs over whether Mr Xi will attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum in San Francisco in November.
China has demanded that the US invite Hong Kong’s chief executive John Lee to the forum despite a US visa ban over his role in crushing the semi-autonomous southern Chinese city’s pro-democracy movement.
Mr Xi has accumulated more power at home than any Chinese leader since Mao Zedong, and has adopted an increasingly aggressive approach to what he views as China’s territorial interests in the South China Sea and toward self-governing Taiwan, which China threatens to annex by force if necessary.
At the same time, China has struggled to recover economically from the hard-line policies it took to control Covid-19.
Foreign businesses also have complained of an increasingly difficult environment in which to invest in and trade with the country.
