China and India agree to manage differences as Xi meets Modi
The leaders meet at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation as India becomes the bloc’s latest member, amid lingering Indian unease over China’s growing influence
Chinese President Xi Jinping told Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi that the two countries should work to appropriately manage their differences, the Chinese foreign ministry said in a statement on Friday.
Xi also congratulated India on becoming an official member state of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) security bloc, jointly led by Russia and China. The two leaders met in Astana, Kazakhstan, on the sidelines of a summit for the eight country bloc, which also includes nearly a dozen other states as partners or observers.
“(China and India) should strengthen multilateral communication and consultation, and appropriately control and manage differences and sensitive issues,” Xi said, according to the statement.
Modi thanked Xi for supporting India’s full membership of the SCO, and said that the two countries should respect each other’s core interests and appropriately manage differences, according to the Chinese foreign ministry post. No comment was immediately available from the Indian delegation.
Xi also said that China and India should increase trade and investment cooperation to ensure that the two countries were able to enjoy more benefits from large scale projects in infrastructure and industry.
India has expressed unease over China’s “Belt and Road Initiative” to expand trade links between China and Eurasia, and did not send government officials from Delhi to attend a summit of leaders and ministers in Beijing in May.
A visit in April by Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, who Beijing brands a separatist, to a region controlled by India but claimed by China stoked tensions between the two countries.
The Indian government has since taken steps to cool tensions, rejecting an Australian request to take part in joint naval exercises with the United States and Japan last month to avoid agonising China.
The SCO was formed by China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in 2001 to fight threats posed by radical Islam and drug trafficking from neighbouring Afghanistan.
China has said that it supports Iran’s membership of the security bloc, as requested by Russia, and that the subject is under discussion at the summit.
