Indian President to visit China next week
May 18, 2016, 5:35 am

File Photo: Indian President Pranab Mukherjee (left) with China’s President Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan at the Presidential Palace (Rashtrapati Bhawan) in New Delhi, India [Image: Indian President’s office]

Mukherjee will meet his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping and other top Chinese leaders during his state visit from May 24-27.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang made the announcement on Wednesday in Beijing.

Business is growing fast between India and China, but the rising powers’ ties are also defined by their partnership and cooperation in groups like the BRICS.

The two neighbours are also trying to strengthen military communication even as they struggle with a border dispute that led to war 50 years ago.

Mukherjee’s visit comes even as the US has escalated tensions in the South China Sea. A US warship last week sailed by China’s largest man-made island, the third so-called “freedom of navigation” operation in seven months that challenges Beijing’s vast claims in the disputed waters.

A new Pentagon report in April has claimed the US military carried out several “freedom of navigation” exercises to challenge territorial claims of China and India in 2015.

US military aircrafts and naval ships carried out these operations against China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Libya, Malaysia, the Maldives, Oman, the Philippines and Vietnam, the Pentagon report said. The purported aim of these assertive US missions are to demonstrate that Washington will not accept the claims of jurisdiction of these countries over disputed areas.

The US Defense Department listed “prior consent required for military exercises or manoeuvres in the EEZ” as an “excessive maritime claim” by New Delhi that Washington challenged in 2015.

India has rebuffed Washington’s overtures to join in joint patrols of the South China Sea.

A trilateral Russia-India-China (RIC) statement echoed Beijing’s position that the disputes must be resolved between “parties directly involved”.

“Russia, India and China are committed to maintaining a legal order for the seas and oceans based on the principles of international law, as reflected notably in the UN Convention on the Law of Sea (UNCLOS). All related disputes should be addressed through negotiations and agreements between the parties concerned. In this regard the Ministers called for full respect of all provisions of UNCLOS, as well as the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) and the Guidelines for the implementation of the DOC,” the joint statement after the Russian, Chinese and Indian Foreign Ministers meet said last month in Moscow.

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.

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

TBP