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TIANJIN, China: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi touched down in the Chinese city of Tianjin on Saturday evening, Indian TV networks showed, a day before a summit that will be attended by leaders from more than 20 countries.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization gathering will be held in the northern port city on Sunday and Monday, days before a massive military parade in nearby Beijing to mark 80 years since the end of World War II.
North Korea’s Kim Jong Un will be among some 26 world leaders slated to attend the parade, though Modi was not on a list of attendees for the parade published by Chinese state media on Thursday.
Modi’s visit – his first to China since 2018 – comes straight after a trip to Japan, which pledged to invest $68 billion in India.
China and IndiA, the world’s two most populous nations, are intense rivals competing for influence across South Asia and fought a deadly border clash in 2020.
A thaw began last October when Modi met with Chinese President Xi Jinping for the first time in five years at a summit in Russia.
The SCO comprises China, India, Russia, Pakistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Belarus. Another 16 countries are affiliated as observers or “dialogue partners.”
Xi began welcoming leaders including Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet and Egyptian Premier Moustafa Madbouly on Saturday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is also due to arrive in Tianjin ahead of the summit.
China and Russia have used the SCO – sometimes touted as a counter to the Western-dominated NATO military alliance – to deepen ties with Central Asian states.
Other leaders including Iranian and Turkish presidents Masoud Pezeshkian and Recep Tayyip Erdogan will also attend the bloc’s largest meeting since its founding in 2001.
Multiple bilateral meetings are expected to be held on the sidelines of the summit.
The Kremlin said on Friday that Putin will discuss the Ukraine conflict with Erdogan on Monday.
Turkiye has hosted three rounds of peace talks between Russia and Ukraine this year that have failed to break the deadlock over how to end the conflict, triggered when Moscow launched its invasion of its pro-European neighbor in February 2022.
Putin will also meet with his Iranian counterpart Pezeshkian to discuss Tehran’s nuclear program on Monday, a meeting that comes as Iran faces fresh Western pressure.
Britain, France and Germany, known as the E3, triggered a “snapback” mechanism on Thursday to reinstate UN sanctions on Iran for failing to comply with commitments made in a 2015 deal over its nuclear program.
Russia’s foreign ministry warned that the reimposition of sanctions against Iran risked “irreparable consequences.”
Tehran and Moscow have been bolstering political, military and economic ties over the past decade as Russia drifted away from the West.
Relations between them grew even closer after Russia launched its offensive against Ukraine.

LAHORE, Pakistan: Nearly half a million people have been displaced by flooding in eastern Pakistan after days of heavy rain swelled rivers, relief officials said Saturday, as they carried out a massive rescue operation.
Three transboundary rivers that cut through Punjab province, which borders India, have swollen to exceptionally high levels, affecting more than 2,300 villages.
Nabeel Javed, the head of the Punjab government’s relief services, said 481,000 people stranded by the floods have been evacuated, along with 405,000 livestock.
Overall, more than 1.5 million people have been affected by the flooding.
“This is the biggest rescue operation in Punjab’s history,” Irfan Ali Khan, the head of the province’s disaster management agency, added at a press conference.
He said more than 800 boats and over 1,300 rescue personnel were involved in evacuating families from affected areas, mostly located in rural areas near the banks of the three rivers.
The latest spell of monsoon flooding since the start of the week has killed 30 people, he said, with hundreds left dead throughout the heavier than usual season that began in June.
“No human life is being left unattended. All kinds of rescue efforts are continuing,” Khan said.
More than 500 relief camps have been set up to provide shelter to families and their livestock.
In the impoverished town of Shahdara, on the outskirts of the provincial capital of Lahore, dozens of families were gathered in a school after fleeing the rising water in their homes.
“Look at all the women sitting with me – they’re helpless and distressed. Everyone has lost everything. Their homes are gone, their belongings destroyed. We couldn’t even manage to bring clothes for their children,” 40-year-old cleaner Tabassum Suleman told AFP.
Rains continued throughout Saturday, including in Lahore, the country’s second-largest city, where an entire housing development was half submerged by water.
Retired shop owner Sikandar Mughal attempted to access his home but the water was still too high.
“When the situation got worse and the water level reached the garage of my house, I took my bike and ran for my life,” the 61-year-old said.
“It’s been two days now since I left. I did not even get a chance to get my clothes so that I could change.”
In mid-August, more than 400 Pakistanis were killed in a matter of days by landslides caused by torrential rains on the other side of the country, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, close to Afghanistan and the only province held by the opposition to the federal authorities.
In 2022, unprecedented monsoon floods submerged a third of Pakistan, with the southern province of Sindh the worst affected area.