India, China strategic partners- Wang
May 10, 2013, 8:26 am

Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi holds talks with his Indian counterpart Salman Khurshid in Beijing [Xinhua]

Wang held talks with India’s external affairs minister Salman Khurshid on Thursday in Beijing for over three hours discussing bilateral trade, investment and the recent border tensions among others.

Khurshid praised the increasingly important roles in international affairs that China and India are playing and said strengthening bilateral cooperation between the two nations helps form a century of Asia.

Both sides had expressed satisfaction with the peaceful resolution of the three week-long standoff, and reaffirmed their commitment to ensure that the boundary issue would not cast a shadow on other aspects of bilateral ties.

China has also expressed its interest in “major investments” in India to offset the balance of trade.

Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister noted last week that in 2012 China, India together accounted for 45 per cent of world growth in purchasing power parity.

“Both sides are preparing for the exchange of high-level visits, which signals a big opportunity for the two countries to push forward their relationship,” said Wang.

“China is willing to make concerted efforts with India, seize the opportunity and promote the strategic cooperative partnership to a new level,” he said, adding that China was “willing to work with India to advance border negotiations to seek a fair and reasonable solution”.

He said China had appointed the former foreign minister and top diplomat Yang Jiechi as the new the special representative on the boundary issue.

India also proposed to expand the current mechanism of sharing hydrological data to a joint management of trans-boundary rivers.

The BRICS Post with inputs from Xinhua