New Delhi: China’s Ambassador to India, Xu Feihong, said on Tuesday that Beijing is willing to be India’s partner in the pursuit of modernisation as development is the “greatest common denominator” between the two countries.
Addressing a seminar on ‘China’s 15th Five-Year Plan：New Blueprint for China’s Development, New Opportunities for China-India Cooperation’, the Ambassador said the two countries need to synergise their development strategies and jointly advance modernisation.
He also added that China is ready to work with India as a doer in high-level practical cooperation.
“In the 15th Five-Year Plan period, China will continue to strengthen the foundation of the real economy, accelerate high-level sci-tech self-reliance, and expand high-standard opening-up. This will create more cooperation opportunities for all countries, including India.”
“We will upgrade traditional industries such as chemical and machinery, which is expected to unlock about $1.4 trillion of new market space in the next five years. We will foster emerging industries such as new energy and new materials, which is expected to give rise to several trillion-dollar new growth engines. We will strategically invest in future industries such as bio-manufacturing and sixth-generation mobile communication, with the scale added over the next decade equivalent to building an entirely new high-tech industrial ecosystem for China,” the Ambassador said.
He also said: “At present, India is advancing major strategies such as “Make in India”. China is ready to deepen practical cooperation with India to make a bigger pie of common interests, so that people in both countries will benefit more from the outcomes of development.”
He added that China is ready to welcome more premium goods imports from India and more Indian companies to invest and do business in China.
Ambassador Feihong also said that China is ready to work with India as a defender of multilateralism.
In a reference to the US, he said, “Some major countries, in pursuit of unilateral hegemony, have frequently waged trade wars and applied international rules in a selective way, posing severe challenges to developing countries. In the face of the profound changes unseen in a century and the countercurrent of unilateralism, China and India should, more than ever, stand shoulder to shoulder, resolutely say no to hegemony, jointly steer multipolarity and economic globalisation toward the right direction as expected by the whole world, and make global governance more just and equitable.”
He added that the bilateral trade between India and China reached $115.2 billion in the first nine months of this year, up by 11 per cent year-on-year.
Since April this year, India’s exports to China have increased by more than 10 per cent year-on-year each month, with a 42 per cent rise in October.
He also highlighted that China has resumed the pilgrimage for Indians to Kangrinboqe Feng and Mapam Yuco (Kailash Manasarovar Yatra) in Xizang Autonomous Region while India has resumed issuing tourist visas to Chinese citizens as part of the restoration of normal ties between the two countries.
Direct flights between the Chinese mainland and India have also been restored.
These measures have been warmly welcome by the peoples of both countries.
The meeting between PM Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Tianjin this year charted the course for the further improvement and development of bilateral relations, Ambassador Feihong added.
(IANS)
