Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) shakes hands with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Ufa, Russia, July 8, 2015. (Xinhua/Zhang Duo)
Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday in the southwestern Russian city of Ufa ahead of two multilateral summits.[Special coverage]
It is the fourth bilateral meeting between the two leaders since their first in Fortaleza, Brazil, last July. Respectively in September 2014 and May 2015, Xi and Modi visited each other's country, including each other's hometown.
The meeting came before the seventh summit of BRICS, an emerging-market bloc that consists of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, and the 15th Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit.
The upcoming SCO summit is expected to pass a resolution on starting the procedures of granting India and Pakistan full membership of the organization.
The SCO, founded in 2001, currently has six member states -- China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, with Afghanistan, India, Iran, Mongolia and Pakistan as observers and Belarus, Turkey and Sri Lanka as dialogue partners.