Days after India reached out to China and advised Indian officials to skip events organised by the Tibetan government-in-exile, Beijing on Thursday asked New Delhi to shed \u201cmental inhibitions\u201d and \u201cmutual suspicion\u201d to improve bilateral ties.<\/p>\n
Using one of the most oft-repeated metaphors for India and China, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said it was time for the Chinese dragon and Indian elephant to dance together rather than fight each other. \u201cThe Chinese dragon and the Indian elephant must not fight each other but dance with each other. If China and India are united, one plus one will not equal two but 11,\u201d Wang said at a press conference in Beijing.<\/p>\n
As reported by The Indian Express on March 2, the government, while underlining that this is a \u201cvery sensitive time\u201d for bilateral relations with China, sent out a note last month asking \u201csenior leaders\u201d and \u201cgovernment functionaries\u201d of the Centre and states to stay away from events planned to mark 60 years in exile of the Dalai Lama. Subsequently, the Tibetan government-in-exile cancelled its two main events in New Delhi.<\/p>\n
Wang\u2019s conciliatory statements \u2014 seen as acknowledgement of India\u2019s outreach \u2014 are key to improving bilateral ties, which have been strained since the Dalai Lama\u2019s visit to Arunachal Pradesh in April last year, following which Wang cancelled his visit to India for the Russia-India-China trilateral meeting the same month.<\/p>\n
Even during the 10-week-long border standoff at Doklam which began in mid-June last year, Wang was the hardline voice from the Chinese establishment, while State Councillor Yang Jiechi was the more moderate voice.<\/p>\n
Striking a placatory tone on Thursday, the Chinese Foreign Minister said the relationship between the two countries continues to grow and leaders of both the countries have developed a strategic vision for the future of their relationship. He also asked both countries to drop mutual suspicion.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs the largest developing countries, each with a population of more than one billion, China and India must do everything to empathise and support each other and to avoid mutual suspicion and attrition,\u201d Wang said.<\/p>\n
His comments follow his meeting, on February 23, with Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale, who visited China to mend fences and reset the India-China relationship after a rocky 2017.<\/p>\n
Wang also spoke about the need for the two countries to trust each other. \u201cMutual trust is the most precious commodity in China-India relations. With political trust, not even the Himalayas can stop us from friendly exchanges. Without it, not even levelled land can bring us together,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cA shared understanding far outstrips our differences. Our common interests far outweigh our frictions. China is willing and ready to inherit and take forward our traditional friendship and be a friend and partner of Indian people,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope the two sides will be free from mental inhibitions and meet each other halfway. Let us replace suspicion with trust, manage differences with dialogue and build a future with cooperation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
His statements are important since India and China have serious differences on issues like the China Pakistan Economic Corridor being part of the One Belt One Road initiative, India\u2019s entry into the Nuclear Suppliers\u2019 Group, and the listing of Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Maulana Masood Azhar as a global terrorist at the UN, which have cast a shadow on the ties between the two countries.<\/p>\n
China, however, took a swipe at India over its presence in the recently revived Quadrilateral \u2014 between Australia, the United States, Japan, and India \u2014 as part of the US Indo-Pacific strategy to counter China\u2019s assertive and proactive activities in the region. The four countries met in Manila, on the sidelines of the ASEAN and East Asia summits in November last year, and there has been a lot of interaction between them, at the bilateral or trilateral level.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope they mean what they say and their actions match their words\u2026 There\u2019s never a shortage of headline-grabbing ideas, but they are like seafoam in the Pacific or Indian Ocean,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Days after India reached out to China and advised Indian officials to skip events organised by the Tibetan government-in-exile, Beijing on Thursday asked New Delhi to shed \u201cmental inhibitions\u201d and \u201cmutual suspicion\u201d to improve bilateral ties. Using one of the most oft-repeated metaphors for India and China, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said it was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24270,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24269"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24271,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24269\/revisions\/24271"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}