China, India should work towards 'win-win' cooperation: Chinese FM

BEIJING: Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Monday that Beijing and New Delhi should work towards mutual trust and “win-win” cooperation, after talks with his Indian counterpart Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, state news agency Xinhua reported.

China and India should “adhere to the direction of good-neighborliness and friendship” and “find a way for mutual respect and trust, peaceful coexistence, common development and win-win cooperation”, Wang said, according to Xinhua.

The two foreign ministers met in Beijing on Monday to seek to repair ties following a 2020 clash on their border.

The world’s two most populous nations are competing for strategic influence across South Asia, and their 3,500-kilometre (2,200-mile) frontier has been a perennial source of tension.

The 2020 clash between their troops led to a four-year military standoff, but they agreed in October on patrols in disputed areas.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and China’s President Xi Jinping met for the first time in five years later that month, agreeing to work on improving relations.

New Delhi is concerned over Beijing’s increasing presence in the Indian Ocean, seeing the region within its sphere of influence.

Another source of tension is the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader India has hosted since he and thousands of other Tibetans fled Chinese troops who crushed an uprising in their capital Lhasa in 1959.

The 90-year-old Dalai Lama says only his India-based organisation has the right to identify his eventual successor.

China insists that it would have final say on who succeeds the Tibetan spiritual leader.