During the meeting of the Council of Heads of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Chinese President Xi Jinping expressed his well-wishes for the organization's summit to be held in India, pledging to support Delhi.
The SCO is the world's largest regional organization, uniting countries such as Russia, India, China, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. This year, the summit is being held in the Silk Road city of Samarkand, Uzbekistan.
"We will support India for its presidency next year," the Chinese head of state said.
Tensions escalated between India and China in May 2020. Following several clashes between the countries’ militaries in the area of Pangong Lake, Beijing boosted its military presence at the Indian border, prompting New Delhi to do the same.
However, earlier this month, the Indian and Chinese armies completed a new phase of disengagement on the disputed border in Ladakh in the area of Gogra-Hot Springs and dismantled temporary infrastructure.
The two nations have thousands of square kilometers of disputed borderlands between them, stretching from the Ladakh region, which is triangulated with Pakistan's Kashmir claims, all the way to Arunachal Pradesh, east of Bhutan. Border clashes are a longstanding fixture of India-China relations, as the countries do not have a demarcated border, but rather the Line of Actual Control (LAC), which was created after the 1962 border war between the nations.