In his second term, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is sure choosing his friends with care. And as he has demonstrated in the course of the last decade-and-a-half, China remains high on his list of priorities.

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India has proposed that the next informal summit meeting between Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping be held in Varanasi. The Chinese side is learnt to have conveyed that they are considering the proposal positively. This proposed summit is in reply to the Wuhan meeting between the two leaders in China’s Hubei province on April 27-28 last year.

They had then spent two days at a lakeside guest house in Wuhan and held discussions for close to 10 hours — the longest recorded one-to-one dialogue between leaders of two countries. While ostensibly, the Indian prime minister wants to reciprocate the courtesies extended to him by the Chinese leader during the Wuhan trip, there is more to the bilateral relationship between the two Asian giants.

If the Varanasi summit does take off, it will be the third time the two leaders would have met this year. Modi and Xi are already making preparations to meet at Bishkek in the Kyrgyz republic this month. By taking the initiative to meet with the strongman from Beijing, Modi has continued an old policy of cultivating China.

As chief minister of Gujarat, Modi visited China more than any other Indian leader in the past, making his contacts with senior leaders of the Communist Party there. Those contacts have paid off. Since the Doklam standoff in 2017, there has been no major incident on the Sino-Indian border, which has been tranquil.

The fact that the tranquility has continued in an election year — so vital for the BJP — has demonstrated to the Modi government the value of the informal Wuhan summit. So if China would agree to a return summit at Varanasi, it would be the icing on the cake, apart from being a global photo opportunity.

The fact that India is willing to go the extra mile with Pakistan’s all-weather friend, is a signal that New Delhi would rather deal with Beijing than its tributary, Islamabad. Even though China’s decision to lift the technical hold on Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar was a result of global diplomatic pressure led by France, the fact is that it has created the political space needed for improving relations between the two countries.

To be sure, any diplomatic relationship has its pitfalls, and Modi would be aware of that. Even when Xi and first lady Peng Liyuan were visiting Gujarat as his guest in 2014, Chinese and Indian troops were involved in an ongoing standoff at Chumar in Ladakh. Also at stake would be the Belt and Road Initiative or BRI, President’s Xi’s most ambitious geostrategic plan to date. While there are many countries in the world that are part of the plan, India has stayed away. It would be interesting to see how bilateral ties pan out between the two sides.