Chinese Ambassador to India Luo Zhaohui has expressed his hope that China and India could open a new chapter in the development of bilateral relations taking the forthcoming 9th BRICS summit as an opportunity.
In an interview with Xinhua on Friday, Luo said both China and India are important BRICS members and China is willing to strengthen cooperation with India in the framework of BRICS.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to attend the BRICS summit to be held in Xiamen, China on Sept. 3-5.
Luo said frequent interactions between leaders of the two countries have greatly pushed forward pragmatic cooperation and enhanced political mutual trust.
Luo stressed that China and India, as important neighbors, have a great potential for cooperation in various fields.
"With the joint efforts of both sides, China and India have made great achievements in bilateral pragmatic cooperation in recent years."
Luo said such cooperation has become even more important against the backdrop of rising anti- globalization and anti-free trade trends in the world.
Luo pointed out that bilateral economic and trade cooperation between China and India has entered a new stage with the bilateral trade volume exceeding 70 billion U.S. dollars last year and China becoming India's largest trading partner.
"China and India need to further promote economic development and achieve a win-win situation from bilateral cooperation as both countries are now focusing on economies," said the ambassador.
"The people-to-people exchanges are going on quite well," Luo said, adding that more than 1 million people exchanged visits between China and India last year.
Luo stressed that China and India, as both are developing countries, share similar views on regional and international issues and enjoy cooperation in many fields such as globalization, climate change and promoting a new just economic and political international order, as well as in multilateral institutions like the BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
