US President Donald Trump has postponed his official visit to China, initially scheduled for this week, to mid-May, amid the uncertainties brought on by the spread of the conflict in West Asia.

The South China Morning Post has now reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin could follow Trump with an official visit in May as well. The Kremlin announced a visit in February and the timing may be largely coincidental, but it sends signals about China’s place in the world and its attempts to manage bilateral relationships.

Trump is also set to use the visit to court an important electoral demographic before the midterm elections — farmers.

Closer home, India saw the appointment of a new ambassador to China, with 1992-batch IFS officer Vikram Doraiswami set to take over. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met his predecessor, Pradeep Kumar Rawat, earlier this week. Finally, we look at two recent reports on China’s growing capacity for mapping and researching the ocean floor.

Here is a closer look at these developments:

1. Besides Trump, China invites leaders from Russia, Taiwan

A potential Putin visit in the same month as Trump would mark the first time that China hosts leaders of the two countries in such a brief period. They will follow another important visit in April, when leaders of the Kuomintang or the Nationalist Party of Taiwan, part of the Opposition in the island’s politics, will visit China.

UPSHOT: For China, ties with both Russia and the US are crucial. Two particular areas of interest at the moment are extending the pause in the tariff war with the US and maintaining stability with Russia, which is a major crude oil supplier to China at a time of trade and fuel uncertainty.

That both countries’ leaders are going to China now speaks to its position globally, even as some have criticised its limited participation in the West Asia conflict in relation to long-term ally Iran.

With Trump’s visit, an almost guaranteed point of discussion would be China’s claims on Taiwan and Washington’s support to the island’s government in the form of arms sales. It was also announced this week that Cheng Li-wun, chairperson of the Kuomintang, accepted the invite.

For Trump, the visit will also come months before the US midterm elections in November for the Congress. A few days ago, he told farmers at the White House, “Thanks to our trade deals, you’re now sending over $40 billion in American soybeans to China.” This was one of the conditions for the tariff pause, with farmers and rural America being a key Trump demographic.

Ahead of the elections, the visit could see more such agreements, but the countries must also contend with deeper trade-related concerns, such as the US’s allegations of China unfairly offering domestic subsidies and limiting market access to foreign companies.

Indian High Commissioner to the UK, Vikram Doraiswami, has been appointed as the new ambassador to China, succeeding Pradeep Kumar Rawat.

As The Indian Express reported, “Doraiswami was posted to the High Commission of India in Hong Kong in May 1994 as Third Secretary. He learnt Chinese, taking an elective diploma in the language at the New Asia Yale-in-China language school of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He was posted at the Indian embassy in Beijing in September 1996 where he served for nearly four years.”

UPSHOT: Wang Yi met Rawat and said that under the “strategic guidance of the leaders of the two countries, China-India relations have embarked on the right track of improvement and development.”

“Facing the volatile international situation, China is willing to work with India to implement the important consensus reached by the leaders of the two countries… and consolidate the hard-won positive momentum of China-India relations,” Wang added.

Doraiswami has previously been posted in South Korea and Bangladesh. His appointment comes at a time when China and India have taken steps to normalise the bilateral relationship, with measures such as resuming direct flights and visas, after the Line of Actual Control (LAC) standoff of 2020.

A recent Reuters investigation (“China is mapping the ocean floor as it prepares for submarine warfare with the US”) found that “China is conducting a vast undersea mapping and monitoring operation across the Pacific, Indian and Arctic oceans, building detailed knowledge of marine conditions that naval experts say would be crucial for waging submarine warfare against the United States and its allies.”

It found that the research has both civilian and military uses and that this marks the first time the extent of China’s mapping and monitoring across the Pacific, Indian and Arctic oceans has been reported. Another analysis from CNN this month also found that Chinese deep-sea vessels are also “making moves around Taiwan and its neighbors that experts say could support China’s military intimidation of the island.”

UPSHOT: Expertise of waterways is crucial for several of China’s strategic interests, be it Taiwan, the Indian Ocean, or the South China Sea. It has frequently engaged in military skirmishes over the last decade with countries like the Philippines, which have laid their own claims to the South China Sea. A command over the region around Taiwan also matters for any eventual plans to take the island by force.

Reuters cited US Rear Admiral Mike Brookes’s testimony to a congressional commission this month. He said China had dramatically expanded its surveying efforts, providing data that “enables submarine navigation, concealment, and positioning of seabed sensors or weapons.”

Brookes added that China is building undersea surveillance networks that “gather hydrographic data – water temperature, salinity, currents – to optimize sonar performance and enable persistent surveillance of submarines transiting critical waterways like the South China Sea.”