Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit India for the first time to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as the world’s most populous nations look to resolve border disputes and trade imbalances.

Xi will visit India, Sri Lanka and Tajikistan from Sept. 12-19, China’s Foreign Ministry said today. This will be his first trip to India as head of state, and comes after Modi won the nation’s biggest electoral mandate in 30 years. Xi will skirt Pakistan, where he was due to sign $34 billion of investment deals, because of political unrest.

“China is starting to see its region as a wider Indo-Pacific, in which the sea lanes, energy supplies and trade routes between east and west matter deeply to China’s security,” Rory Medcalf, director at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney, said in an e-mail. “Thus Beijing is seeking to manage India as a potential strategic competitor, and build ties with smaller countries that may be useful in China’s long-term regional engagement.”

China is seeking to boost ties with India as relations with Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines have deteriorated over territorial disputes. India and China, home to more than a third of the world’s population, have seen sporadic border clashes over the past five decades with the latest one leading to a three-week standoff last year.

India accuses China of occupying 38,000 square kilometers of territory in Jammu and Kashmir, while the government in Beijing lays claim to 90,000 square kilometers of land in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh.

Modi in his campaign for the May elections promised to take a harder line on protecting India’s borders with China than his predecessor. Tension over territory has hobbled the nations’ relationship since a 1962 war. Modi warned China to drop its “territorial mindset” in February and said his country’s weakness had encouraged China’s army to enter Indian territory last year.

After Modi’s victory, both sides toned down the rhetoric. Modi told Xi at a July meeting in Brazil that an amicable resolution would set an example for the world on how to peacefully resolve conflicts. Xi called for “negotiated solutions” to the border dispute with India at an early date, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

Progress on the border dispute would allow the government to devote more resources to strengthening economic ties. Modi has called for more Chinese investment in infrastructure as a way to rectify a $34 billion trade imbalance with India’s largest trade partner.

“It is an important visit, I think it is a significant visit,” said Anit Mukherjee, an assistant professor in the South Asia Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. “The big outcome is stabilization on the border, which I don’t think anybody expects this time, because that’s not something that people have worked towards. But that would be a game changer.”

Xi’s visit comes as Japan, which has seen its relations with China sour over its own territorial disputes, also courts Modi. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pledged a sweeping upgrade of economic and security ties with India after hosting Modi in Tokyo last week. Japan would double investment and expand defense cooperation with India, he said.

The two leaders also affirmed their commitment to maritime security, freedom of navigation and the peaceful settlement of disputes under international law, a veiled dig at China, which is involved in disputes with at least half a dozen Asian nations over territory in the East and South China Seas and in the case of India, on land.

In a speech to business leaders in Tokyo, Modi said, “the world is divided in two camps. One camp believes in expansionist policies while the other believes in development.”

Modi’s comments weren’t directed at China, Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj told reporters at a briefing in New Delhi yesterday.

Xi was forced to drop his first Pakistan visit from the trip over concern about anti-government protests that are trying to force Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to resign over allegations of vote rigging. (Bloomberg)