Chinese Foreign Minister wraps up India trip after meeting top leaders
August 14, 2016, 5:49 am

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (R) meets with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in New Delhi, India, Aug. 13, 2016 [Xinhua]

On Saturday, Wang held talks with his Indian counterpart Sushma Swaraj and met Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Common interests between China and India far exceed their differences, and the need for cooperation far exceeds the competition, Wang said during his meeting with the Indian Premier, Chinese state agencies reported.

The foreign minister said “China always welcomes the development and rise of India, and supports India to play a more positive role in regional as well as international affairs”.

“The development of both China and India is conducive to the better balance and stability of world powers,” Wang added.

On Friday, Wang visited Goa, the southern Indian state that will host the 8th BRICS Summit, where he took stock of preparations for the event.

Indian Prime Minister Modi also asserted that and China need to boost communications and mutual support to ensure successes for the G20 summit scheduled next month in China’s city of Hangzhou as well as the BRICS summit to be held in the Indian state of Goa in October.

Modi will host his four BRICS counterparts on 15-16 October where they will take stock of intra-BRICS trade and recent initiatives launched by the BRICS New Development Bank.

The strengthening of cooperation between India and China will provide aspirations for other developing nations, Modi noted on Saturday.

This week emerging-market stocks posted the longest streak of weekly gains since March 2014. Developing-nation assets are trading near one-year highs.

In his meeting with the Indian Premier, Wang stressed that amid the challenges that the global economy currently faces, it is highly important to ensure the successful organization of the G20 and BRICS summits. China is willing to boost mutual support with India for this end, he said.

The IMF scrapped its forecast for a pickup in global growth this year, citing Britain’s vote to leave the European Union.

Earlier in June in Beijing this year, Indian Finance Minister Arun Jaitley made a strong pitch for Chinese investments in India’s expanding infrastructure sector.

“Even in an unsupportive global environment we probably would be only economy which moves up towards 7.5 per cent and more towards the eight per cent growth rate… India in these roadmaps offers an attractive opportunity,” Jaitley said at the meeting attended by a large number of top Chinese bankers and wealth fund managers.

Official relations between the world’s two fastest growing economies have come a long way since the two fought a brief border war in 1962.

Chinese and Indian border troops have conducted a joint disaster relief exercise, in February this year.

China and India agreed to begin military exchanges and establish a hotline linking army commanders on either side of their disputed border last year.

India has partnered with China on both the BRICS Bank and the AIIB.

BRICS members China, India and Russia are also the three largest shareholders in the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), with a voting share of 26.06 per cent, 7.5 per cent and 5.92 per cent, respectively.

The BRICS Development Bank, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the Silk Road Fund are all initiatives spearheaded by China for a new kind of global development financing.

TBP