China is willing to work with India to handle conflicts and differences properly, the country's foreign minister Wang Yi reportedly said in a conversation with India's S Jaishankar in Beijing on Monday during the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Foreign Ministers' Meeting.
Wang Yi was speaking as Jaishankar also stressed at the meeting that “differences should not become disputes, nor should competition ever become conflict”.
The Chinese minister expressed his country's willingness to “safeguard the multilateral trading system” and thus ensure “stability of the global production and supply chain with India”.
Besides, of course, the last few years' hostilities between India and China, Wang Yi's comments come also in the backdrop of US President Donald Trump's aggressive tariff policies for his ‘America First’ approach.
Wang Yi said of India and China that both sides should “trust rather than suspect each other; cooperate rather than compete with each other”, news agency Reuters reported. He added that the essence of the India-China equation lay in mutual success.
He also reportedly told Jaishankar that both countries should make long-term plans.
{{/usCountry}}He also reportedly told Jaishankar that both countries should make long-term plans.
{{/usCountry}}“China and India should adhere to the direction of good-neighbourliness and friendship, and find a way for mutual respect and trust, peaceful coexistence, common development and win-win cooperation,” the Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported.
Long-term vision in focus
Earlier, India's external affairs minister S Jaishankar met Wang Yi and said the relationship requires a “far-seeing approach”.
He said that ever since Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in Russia’s Kazan October 2024, the ties between the countries have improved.
Jaishankar said representatives of the two countries have met each other at international events and he expects that such meetings can take place in India and China itself. Both the countries have completed 75 years of diplomacy with each other, he underlined.
Jaishankar brings up border issue
Jaishankar also brought up the border issue, a long-standing point of contention between the two countries, during his opening remarks at the meet. He said ties between India and China have improved in the last nine months as a result of the “resolution of friction along the border”.
“This is the fundamental basis for mutual strategic trust," he added.
Jaishankar said that “stable and constructive ties” between India and China will benefit the whole world, not just the two countries.