Eye on China, Narendra Modi-Shinzo Abe Summit planned in October?

New Delhi: Hectic parleys are on again between India and Japan to hold their next annual summit either in October or November. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe postponed his visit to Guwahati following massive protests over the Citizenship Amendment Bill in December last.

The proposed summit is expected to focus on an expansionist China that has been attempting to change the status quo on its borders with India, and in the East China Sea.

Deliberations on the next date for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's meeting with his Japanese counterpart were paused after the virus that originated in China spread across the world soon after.

But as the world suffered, China's Xi Jinping went on an overdrive to expand its territory in the South China Sea and its land border with India. It has lately initiated the process to get its army to disengage along the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh, but the troop withdrawal process has been a slow process.

A defence white paper by the Japanese government released this week counted China's aggressive moves in the East China Sea and the South China Sea and its "relentless attempts" to alter status quo by coercion as a key concern. The Abe government, which had taken a lead role in crafting the quadrilateral security dialogue process in the Indo-Pacific region, also noted that a regional cooperation framework "had not been sufficiently institutionalised" in the Indo-Pacific region. The Quad comprises the United States, Japan, India and Australia with the door open for others to join in.

During the summit, India and Japan are also expected to formalise a logistics sharing pact, Acquisition and Cross Servicing Agreement, that would give militaries of the two countries access to each other's bases.