Senior Indian diplomat to visit China on Sunday

As part of improving official contacts between China and India, Beijing said on Friday that it is looking forward to Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri's upcoming visit to China.

The Indian senior diplomat will be in China to take part in the China-India vice-foreign minister/foreign secretary level dialogue, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said at a daily news conference in Beijing.

According to a statement on Thursday by the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, the foreign secretary will visit Beijing from Sunday to Monday.

One of the most prominent steps taken by Beijing and New Delhi recently to repair and boost their ties was the October meeting between President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Kazan, Russia on the sidelines of the annual BRICS summit, observers noted.

The two leaders "reached important consensus on improving and developing China-India relations", Mao said, adding that, "Recently, China and India have earnestly implemented the important consensus between the two countries' leaders."

The two countries' foreign ministers and defense ministers have also recently met separately in multilateral settings.

Also, the special representatives of China and India on the boundary question held a 23rd meeting last month and achieved positive results.

"The two sides agreed to improve and strengthen interactions, resume institutional dialogues as well as exchanges and cooperation in various fields, and push China-India relations to return to the track of healthy and stable development at an early date," Mao said.

Beijing will "release relevant information in due course" about the upcoming dialogue, she added.

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and India.

India was one of the first countries to recognize the People's Republic of China and the first non-socialist country to establish diplomatic ties with New China.

As two major developing countries, their relations "should maintain healthy and stable development, which is in line with the fundamental interests of over 2.8 billion people in both countries and the historical trend of common development of the Global South", Wang Lei, charge d'affaires of the Chinese embassy in India, said at a reception on Wednesday.

"We stand ready to work with the Indian side in the spirit of looking to the future and pursuing win-win cooperation, invest our valuable resources into development and revitalization, and place the border issue in an appropriate position within bilateral relations," Wang said.

zhangyunbi@chinadaily.com.cn