Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to visit China on August 31 to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit, marking his first trip to the country since the 2020 Galwan Valley clash.

The summit — a key annual meeting of member states to discuss regional security, economic cooperation, and geopolitical issues — will be held in Tianjin from August 31 to September 1.

Before travelling to China, PM Modi will visit Japan on August 30 to participate in the annual India-Japan Summit with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, sources said. From there, he will head to Tianjin for the SCO gathering, according to reports.

There is no official word on Modi's planned visit to Japan and China yet.

The visit comes amid a tariff tussle with the United States and heightened global attention on the Brics grouping, after US President Donald Trump accused member nations of “buying oil from Russia” and being part of “a grouping that challenges the hegemony of the dollar.”

This will be PM Modi’s first visit to China since his October 2019 trip, following a thaw in India-China relations.

The bilateral meeting between Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2024 at the Brics summit in Kazan, Russia, came after the two sides reached an agreement on patrolling arrangements along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), leading to disengagement in areas of Depsang and Demchok in eastern Ladakh.

The 3,488-km LAC separates India and China from Ladakh in the west to Arunachal Pradesh in the east.

Tensions within the SCO have been evident in recent months.

In June, defence minister Rajnath Singh attended the SCO defence ministers’ meeting in Qingdao, China, where he refused to sign a document that, according to sources, would have “diluted India’s stand on terrorism” and the Pahalgam terror attack that killed 26 people.

Due to divergence on the issue, the SCO opted not to release a joint statement.

Sources added that China, as the SCO chair, along with its “all-weather friend” Pakistan, attempted to omit any reference to the Pahalgam attack in the document, while including a mention of Balochistan — seen as a veiled attempt to accuse India of fomenting unrest in the Pakistani province.

With inputs from agencies