India, China must respect each other’s core concerns: Jaishankar

 India and China should find stronger convergences, respect each other’s core concerns and manage differences, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has said as he underlined that the relationship between the two Asian giants has become “so big” that it has acquired a “global dimension”.Jaishankar, who concluded his three-day visit to Beijing on Monday, held extensive and in-depth talks with his counterpart Wang Yi on the entire gamut of the India-China ties.During his visit, he also met Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan, a close confidant of President Xi Jinping.As the two largest developing countries and emerging economies, cooperation between India and China is of great importance to the world, Jaishankar told state-run Xinhua news agency here in an interview on Sunday. “Our relationship is so big that it is no longer a bilateral relationship. It has global dimensions,” the report quoted Jaishankar as saying..Describing the world as “more multi-polar” with changing global order, he said India and China need to enhance communication and coordination to contribute to world peace, stability and development.The two countries should find stronger areas of convergence, respect each other’s core concerns, find ways of managing differences and keep a strategic view of the direction of bilateral ties, he said.The minister said the two neighbours have a long history that goes back to thousands of years and the two countries’ civilisations are among the oldest that represent two pillars of the civilisation of the East.”A lot of people, including young people of both countries, really don’t have a good understanding of how much our two cultures of civilisations have affected each other,” Jaishankar said, underlining that “promoting a greater awareness of that history” through more cultural exchanges is an important task for the two countries.India and China have agreed to establish a high-level people-to-people exchanges mechanism in April last year and the first meeting was held in New Delhi in December.Describing the move as “taking the bilateral relationship from the narrow diplomatic field to a larger societal interaction”, Jaishankar said the more people of the two nations interact face-to-face, the more their sense of relating to each other will grow.”It’s important for our relationship to build popular support. Our people must feel good about each other,” he said.Jaishankar had also co-chaired the 2nd meeting of the China-India high-level people-to-people exchanges mechanism with Wang Yi, agreeing to further promote friendship between the two peoples.