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India-China trade reached ‘record high’ of $155.6 billion in 2025: Chinese envoy
Xu Feihong pointed to several developments to argue that bilateral relations have improved since the end of a military standoff on the Line of Actual Control
India-China trade reached a “record high” of $155.6 billion in 2025, registering year-on-year growth of more than 12% at a time the world is grappling with growing changes and turbulence, Chinese ambassador Xu Feihong said on Tuesday.
Xu, who was addressing an event to mark the Chinese New Year in New Delhi, pointed to several developments to argue that bilateral relations have improved since the end of a military standoff on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) that lasted more than four years.
He contended that bilateral ties have “continued to improve”, with India’s exports to China growing by 9.7% amid the growth in two-way trade, while China has resumed the pilgrimage to a sacred mountain and holy lake in the Xizang region — a reference to the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra — with nearly 20,000 Indian pilgrims visiting the site.
Xu said India resumed issuing tourist visas to Chinese citizens, and direct flights between the Chinese mainland and India were restored, facilitating exchanges between the people of the two countries.
Facing a world of “growing changes and turbulence”, President Xi Jinping proposed the Global Governance Initiative for a “more just and equitable global governance system”, Xu said. China practices true multilateralism and is “committed to safeguarding the global free trade system” and stable and unimpeded supply chains, he said.
China also supports India’s presidency of Brics this year and is ready to strengthen multilateral coordination and to work together to advance the development of the Global South, Xu said.
“Last August, President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a successful meeting in Tianjin, which led China-India relations from ‘a reset and fresh start’ to a new level of improvement,” Xu said, referring to the meeting of the two leaders on the margins of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit in Tianjin.
“We stand ready to work with India to draw wisdom from our traditional cultures, uphold the important consensus that China and India are each other’s cooperation partner and development opportunity,” he said. “We are ready to enhance people-to-people exchanges with India, build more bridges of friendship and bring our peoples closer together.”
Since India and China ended the face-off in the Ladakh sector of the LAC in October 2024, the two sides have taken several steps to address their long-standing border dispute and to normalise bilateral ties. Ties between the two neighbours plunged to their lowest point in six decades after a brutal clash at Galwan Valley in June 2020 killed 20 Indian soldiers and at least four Chinese troops.
However, the Indian side has expressed concern at the lack of adequate access to China’s markets, leading to bilateral trade being skewed in Beijing’s favour, and China’s export restrictions in crucial sectors such as fertilisers, rare earth minerals and heavy machinery such as tunnel boring equipment.
