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| Xian (china): Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as they visit a Buddhist temple here on Thursday.—Reuters |
BEIJING: Chinese President Xi Jinping hosted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his ancestral hometown at the start of a three-day visit to China on Thursday as their countries work to boost economic ties despite decades of mistrust.
It was the first time Mr Xi had invited a foreign leader to his father’s home province of Shaanxi, in the heart of central China, a signal that the two might set aside suspicions over a festering border dispute to sign trade deals worth billions.
Mr Modi’s visit reciprocated Mr Xi’s trip to India in September, when the Indian premier took the Chinese president to his home state of Gujarat.
“China is a huge market. As far as India is concerned, it’s a totally under-exploited market,” said T.C.A. Rangachari, a former Indian ambassador to France and Germany who worked on China affairs for more than 15 years. Mr Modi posed for photos near a pit of 2,000-year-old terracotta warrior sculptures in the historic north-western city of Xian.
The two leaders also visited a pagoda connected to Xuanzang, also known as Tripitaka, the monk who brought the Buddhist sutras to China from India thousands of years ago, a spokesman for India’s Ministry of External Affairs said via his Twitter account. Mr Modi was given a figurine of Xuanzang. The two sides have also agreed to speed up work on rail links in India, as China seeks to cash in on Mr Modi’s vision of a modern train system.
The longstanding Himalayan border dispute and recent forays by China’s navy into the Indian Ocean have overshadowed ties in the past. Some in China, which is a strong ally of Pakistan, have reacted to the visit with scepticism.
“Due to the Indian elites’ blind arrogance and confidence in their democracy, and the inferiority of its ordinary people, very few Indians are able to treat Sino-Indian relations accurately, objectively and rationally,” wrote Hu Zhiyong of the Institute of International Relations at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences in the state-owned Global Times.
Published in Dawn, May 15th, 2015
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