Tianjin: Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in China for the 2025 Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit and held talks with President Xi Jinping on strengthening bilateral relations. While India and China moved discussions toward strategic cooperation, memories of a past SCO summit continue to haunt Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.
At the 2022 summit in Uzbekistan, Sharif became the center of attention not for his diplomacy but for a struggle with his translation headphones during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The device slipped repeatedly and despite aides rushing to assist, Sharif could not adjust it properly. The awkward moment drew a brief laugh from Putin as the Pakistani leader asked aloud, “Can somebody help me?” The incident, filmed by Russian state media, quickly went viral worldwide.
The fallout was severe back in Pakistan. Opposition leaders mocked the episode, with former Deputy Speaker Qasim Khan Suri highlighting the passive expressions of the Pakistani delegation, including Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, Miftah Ismail, and Khawaja Asif. Shireen Mazari criticized Sharif online, accusing him of embarrassing the nation. Internationally, the moment gained attention as well, with US comedian Jimmy Fallon joking that it was surprising such a figure could lead a nation of 220 million people.
Sharif has faced other controversies abroad since then. In 2023, at the Global Financing Pact summit in Paris, he was criticized after taking an umbrella from a female staffer and leaving her exposed to the rain. Earlier this year, he congratulated Donald Trump on his return to the White House in a post on X, only for the platform to flag it as a violation of Pakistan’s ban on the site. He also once came under fire for posting a doctored image of a Chinese rocket launcher as a supposed diplomatic gift.
As Modi and Xi held their high-level discussions in Tianjin this week, the contrast between India’s effort to project diplomatic maturity and Pakistan’s repeated stumbles on the global stage appeared stark. The SCO summit once again reminded observers that in an era of instant digital scrutiny, even minor missteps can overshadow a leader’s political agenda. For Shehbaz Sharif, the laughter over a pair of headphones continues to echo long after the meeting ended.