PM on two-day visit to Japan from Aug 29, then heads to China for SCO

“At the invitation of the Prime Minister of Japan, Shigeru Ishiba, Prime Minister Modi will visit Japan from 29-30 August, 2025 to participate in the 15th India-Japan Annual Summit. This will be Prime Minister Modi’s eighth visit to Japan, and the first Summit with Prime Minister Ishiba,” the Ministry of External Affairs said on Friday.

Japan was one of the early visits by PM Modi in 2014. He has regularly travelled to the country as part of annual meetings, including G20 and G7 summits.

“During the visit, the two Prime Ministers will review the Special Strategic and Global Partnership between India and Japan, including defence and security, trade and economy, technology and innovation, and people to people exchanges, as well as discuss issues of regional and global importance,” the ministry said. It also said that the visit will reaffirm the longstanding special bond of friendship between the two countries.

Japan is an important strategic partner and a fellow member of the Quad grouping and relations with the country have been developed in a robust manner in the last 25 years.

Announcing the China visit, the MEA said, “In the second leg of his visit, at the invitation of the President of China, Xi Jinping, Prime Minister will travel to China from 31 August to 1 September, 2025 to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit in Tianjin. On the sidelines of the Summit, the Prime Minister is expected to hold bilateral meetings with several leaders attending the Summit.”

India has been a member of SCO since 2017. It held the presidency of the Council of Heads of State of SCO in 2022-23.

This will be PM Modi’s first visit to China after seven years. He had last travelled to the country for the SCO summit in Qingdao in June 2018.

This marks a very important step towards normalisation of ties that have been strained due to the border standoff.

India and China have agreed to establish at least three border mechanisms, restart border trade and issuing visas to Chinese nationals as part of the normalisation process. Earlier, the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra had been resumed after five years as part of first steps towards normalising ties. Now, the two sides have also decided to resume direct flights between the two countries.

The difficult issue of de-escalation still remains and the two sides have agreed to move forward on that as well.