Modi-Xi offsite holds lessons for other powers

You’ve heard of corporate offsites, where company bigwigs travel to exotic destinations to discuss strategies and iron out issues in an informal setting. Well, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “informal summit” with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the historical Mamallapuram in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu is the closest you’ll get to a diplomatic or geo-strategic offsite, where the leaders of the two most populous nations in the world will discuss bilateral and multilateral issues that, in one way or the other, will have some impact on the lives of 40 per cent of the world’s population.

It’s a new way to conduct diplomacy. Not very often do you get summit meetings, even informal ones, that are almost completely unstructured.

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