New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping for bilateral talks focusing on normalising bilateral ties through expansion of trade and investment ties.
The meeting took place hours after Xi arrived in the national capital on a two-day visit to attend the BRICS Summit, marking his first trip to India in seven years.
People familiar with the matter said Xi’s visit presents a key opportunity to further normalise relations that came under severe strain following the eastern Ladakh military standoff.
“I welcome you to India,” Modi said in his opening remarks at the meeting.
Xi’s visit to India comes on the heels of several high-level exchanges, including the Special Representative dialogue in Beijing between National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, even as lingering concerns remain over aggressive Chinese military posturing along the Arunachal Pradesh sector.
Modi and Xi held wide-ranging talks on August 31 last year on the margins of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Chinese city of Tianjin.
In the last few months, the two sides have taken a series of measures to rebuild their relationship after it came under severe strain following the deadly Galwan Valley clashes in 2020.
Doval had held the Special Representative talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang late last month that focused on delimitation of the frontier and sustaining work on trans-boundary cooperation as well as to maintain peace along the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
Both Doval and Wang are the designated special representatives for the boundary talks mechanism, which was established in 2003 to comprehensively address the dispute of the India-China border spanning 3,488 km.
