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Will review strategic developments in India-China relations, says Modi on meet with Xi Jinping
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping will be meeting in Wuhan for informal meetings on April 27 and 28.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who will be arriving in China Thursday midnight for a two-day “informal meeting” with Chinese President Xi Jinping, said the two will “exchange views on range of issues of bilateral and global importance”.
“We’ll discuss our respective visions and priorities for national development, in context of current and future international situation,” Modi told the media hours ahead of his departure.
“We will also review the developments in the India-China relations from a strategic and long-term perspective,” he said.
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Modi and Jinping will meet over two days, on April 27 and 28, in Wuhan city of Hubei province. The interaction, mostly without aides, officials say, is aimed at ending decades of distrust that has deepened as China, with an economy five times bigger than India’s, asserts itself in the region.
The two leaders are expected to talk freely and “heart-to-heart” on issues that are tied to national interests, their plans for “national rejuvenation” and factors that are slowing down these proposals even though there is no structured agenda for the talks on Friday and Saturday.
Read | When Modi and Xi talk in China, only one other Indian will be present
“It’s informal summit, they’ll be meeting in informal environment, agenda will be open, they’ll spend lot of time over 2 day and there’ll be different kind of conversations, much more personal and interactive,” former foreign secretary and Indian envoy to China S Jaishankar told news agency ANI.
This will be Modi’s fourth visit to China since 2014. He is due to visit China again on June 9 and 10 to take part in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit in Qingdao city.
