'Chennai summit set tone for sound India-China ties'

The informal summit in Chennai between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping has set the tone for steady and sound development of ties between the two nations, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Friday.

The second informal summit held at Mamallapuram in Tamil Nadu in October figured prominently in Wang's address at a symposium on China's diplomacy in 2019 here. His address was posted on the Chinese Foreign Ministry website.

Over the past year, China has comprehensively strengthened relations with neighbouring countries and made positive contributions, promoting regional stability and development Wang said, highlighting China's diplomacy outreach.

"President Xi and Prime Minister Modi successfully held their second meeting in Chennai, India. The two leaders had a long-term and in-depth strategic communication. They decided to deepen pragmatic cooperation in various fields, promote exchanges and mutual learning between civilisations, and maintain a stable Sino-Indian relationship," he said.

The Chennai summit has "set the tone for the steady and sound development of China-India relations and opened up new prospects for the mutually beneficial cooperation between the two countries," Wang said in his address at the symposium.

The two leaders held their first informal summit at Wuhan last year followed up with the one in Chennai this year.

They have agreed for a third informal meeting in China next year.

At the Chennai summit, the two leaders had agreed to establish a high-level economic and trade dialogue mechanism with the objective of achieving enhanced trade and commercial relations, specially to address India's trade deficit with China which last year mounted to over USD 57 billion in USD 95.5 billion total trade between the two countries.

They also decided to designate 2020 as the year of India-China cultural and people-to-people exchanges and hold 70 activities to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the establishment of India-China relations in 2020.

The foreign minister also spoke of Xi's "historic visit" to North Korea and improvement of China and Japan relations besides Beijing's strong ties with Association of Southeast Asian Nations.