PM Modi to hold informal meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Wuhan today

Prime minister Narendra Modi will today join Chinese President Xi Jinping for an informal summit in the Chinese city Wuhan. Mr Modi landed at Wuhan Airport last night to a grand welcome. Enthusiastic crowd of Indians including students living in the city welcomed Mr Modi at the Wanda Reign Hotel.

The Prime Minister will have relaxed meeting with President Xi. Officials from both the sides say the two leaders would spend most of the time interacting with each other with one-on-one conversations focussing on global, regional and bilateral issues. Our correspondent covering the visit reports, the details of the informal summit were not disclosed.

The informal summit could be a new starting point after their first informal meeting at the Sabarmati Ashram of Mahatma Gandhi in



Gujarat in 2014. Both the leaders will have a two-day heart-to-heart summit starting today at Wuhan, a favourite holiday spot of revolutionary leader Mao Zedong.

The upcoming summit will be an informal one, different from formal visits. The summit will be relaxed and friendly with rich format. Officials on both sides played down speculation of any agreement to be reached between the two leaders saying that no such thing was on the table.

Modi and Xi will try to work out a general framework for relations to move ahead without much of great expectations about the outcome, a senior Indian official said. However, there will be a delegation level talk today with six persons attending from both the countries.