India-China ties reached a “new level of improvement” after the recent meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping in Tianjin, Chinese Ambassador to India Xu Feihong said on Tuesday. He said the two countries should not let the boundary dispute define ties between them.
Speaking at a function in Delhi to celebrate China’s National Day, Mr. Xu, who was joined by Arun Kumar Chatterjee, Secretary, External Affairs Ministry, said this year marks 76 years of the Communist Party government and 75 years since the establishment of India-China diplomatic relations and had seen a major improvement in high-level engagements and people-to-people ties.
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Mr. Modi and Mr. Xi have met twice in the past year, and both sides have agreed to restore flights, visas, and other bilateral mechanisms after the four-year-freeze on ties due to the military stand-off at the Line of Actual Control.
“Bridging differences through dialogue has always been the important key to advancing China-India relations,” Mr. Xu said, adding that the two countries “should not allow the boundary question that was left over from the past to define the current China-India relations, nor let specific differences affect comprehensive bilateral cooperation”. During the LAC stand-off, New Delhi had maintained that normal bilateral relations were not possible without normalcy at the boundary.
