G20 Summit 2023

China’s Foreign Ministry announced Li’s visit earlier this week. Through remarks to media, China has said it wants the G20 Summit to succeed and called for deeper economic cooperation among the grouping’s 19 countries plus the European Union, and Indian officials have said Xi’s absence would not be the first time a head of state or government would miss such an event. 

According to a release from the British High Commission, families both in Ukraine and across the world continue to suffer as a direct result of Putin’s brutal invasion 18 months ago. Russia has displaced 11 million people from their homes, manipulated global energy prices and made daily life more difficult for households across the planet.

It will also connect to India through shipping lanes from ports in the region, the Axios report said. The project is one of the key initiatives the White House is pushing in the Middle East as China's influence in the region grows. The Middle East is a key part of China’s Belt and Road vision.

A section of the US media said even as New Delhi was on a 24/7 domestic coverage of the upcoming summit in New Delhi, the attention Xi was grabbing both in India and overseas around the world was quite large as he was skipping it for the first time in his presidency. His absence offers a new perspective on the relationship between the two biggest countries on earth, the report said.

“New Delhi views the G20 Presidency as an opportunity to show that it has the capacity to serve as a bridge to the Global South; that it can show India’s ability to manage relations with rival powers,” Michael Kugelman, the director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington, told the TIME magazine in an interview.

The Indian President Droupadi Murmu's invite to the world leaders for an official banquet issued in the name of 'Bharat' and not India has not only created a stir in Indian media but also fuelled speculation overseas if Prime Minister Narendra Modi plans to change the name to Bharat in accordance with the early Hindu tradition of it being 'Bharat' which was anglicised by the British to India, media reports said.

Biden reaches New Delhi on Thursday and will hold a bilateral meeting with his host Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday evening, John Kirby, the US National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications, told reporters on Wednesday previewing the visit, the day after Jake Sullivan, the US National Security Adviser, briefed reporters at the White House.

After days of uncertainty, the Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning confirmed Jinping's unavailability for the G20 summit in a statement on Monday.

Multiple sources close to the negotiations have told The Guardian the UK prime minister has rejected the idea of an "early harvest" deal, which could have lowered tariffs on goods such as whisky but would not have dealt with trickier subjects such as professional services.

Reports further said that both nations may mutually decide to resume talks in future.