China’s foreign minister to visit India next week

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj shakes hands with Oman Foreign Minister Yousuf bin Alawi bin Abdullah in New Delhi yesterday.

Agencies/BeijingChina’s foreign minister will visit India next week for the first high-level meeting between the two countries after new Prime Minister Narendra Modi assumed office. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said Foreign Minister Wang Yi would arrive in New Delhi on Sunday for a two-day trip as a special envoy of China’s President Xi Jinping. Hong said that Wang would meet Indian officials, including the country’s new External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, though he added that the agenda was still being worked out and could not say if Wang would also meet Modi. Modi last month invited Xi to visit, seeking greater engagement between the world’s two most populous nations on issues of trade and regional security. Beijing has yet to formally respond to that invitation. The last Chinese head of state to visit India was Hu Jintao in 2012. Modi won election by a landslide, ending a decade of rule by the Congress that for most of the time since independence has been associated with a policy of non-alignment. The new prime minister is keen to rebalance relations between New Delhi and Beijing that have long been marked by suspicion. China’s closest ally in the region is Pakistan, whose Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif attended Modi’s inauguration. China and India fought a brief Himalayan war in 1962 that India lost. Tension has occasionally flared on their common border, which runs for a total of nearly 3,400km and is still partly in dispute. India runs a $40bn trade deficit with China, and Modi is expected to seek greater market access to reduce that gap. China’s own embrace of an export-led model has helped its economy outgrow India’s fourfold since 1980.  Meanwhile, Oman Foreign Minister Yousuf bin Alawi bin Abdullah, the first foreign dignitary to visit India since the Modi government came to power, yesterday met the prime minister and the external affairs minister, and discussed ways to boost trade and investment.Abdullah, special envoy of Sultan Qaboos, called on Modi at his South Block office and conveyed the greetings of the Omani leader and reaffirmed the importance of ties with India.Modi conveyed his deep appreciation of the sultan’s gesture and said he looked forward to further strengthening the close ties between the two countries.The prime minister also thanked the sultan for looking after the welfare of 700,000 Indians living in the Gulf country.