A day before Chinese President Xi Jinping arrives in India for his three-day tour, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that he was looking forward to enhancing and strengthening bilateral relations with China and hoped both sides show “mutual sensitivity to each other’s concerns and aspirations.”
The Prime Minister said that while he was looking forward to deepening India’s engagement in a big way with China, he was also keen on making progress on ‘issues of concern’, because only resolution of these issues will transform the atmosphere in relations between the two countries. India has been critical of Chinese practice of giving stapled visas to residents of Jammu & Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh. Besides, incidents of transgressions have been regular irritants in the relationship.
In an interaction with Chinese journalists, Modi said that his Government attaches high priority to relations with China and was seeking a closer developmental partnership. He expressed the hope that both the countries will resolve the pending issues.
“Relations between neighbours are always of special importance to each country, because their destinies are inter-linked. I don’t see our relations with China only as a neighbour, with which we have had millennia old contacts. China is important for the future of this region and the world… We seek a closer developmental partnership. India can benefit from China’s strength in hardware such as creation of infrastructure and development of our manufacturing sector. These are the areas where India wants to make rapid progress. On the other hand, India’s strength in software can help Chinese companies to become more efficient and competitive. It offers opportunity for Indian companies to export services to China,” Modi said.
“For enhancing and further strengthening bilateral relations, we should show mutual sensitivity to each other’s concerns and aspirations, follow the principle of mutual and equal security, seek closer developmental partnership and enhance people-to-people exchanges to create better understanding. I am looking forward to deepening our engagement across the full spectrum of our bilateral relations, but also seeking progress on issues of concern, because resolution of these issues will transform the atmosphere in our relations and allow us to realise the full potential of our relations,” he said.
On a question on inviting Xi to visit Gujarat, the Prime Minister said he is making efforts to see that visiting heads of state travel beyond New Delhi and see the small town India to understand the country’s diversity better. “leaders of various countries, if they visit small places, it is good. By only coming to Delhi they won’t be able to understand India as this country is full of diversity,” Modi said.