Xi's visit to India to be milestone in bilateral ties: envoy

The upcoming visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping to India will be a milestone in the development of bilateral ties, Chinese ambassador to India Le Yucheng has said. [Special coverage]

In a recent interview with Xinhua and other Delhi-based Chinese media, Le said that as two neighbors at the same stage of development and sharing similar views on international affairs, China and India enjoy a good basis for developing relations.

Le said that as both China and India are experiencing important periods of development, Xi's visit, scheduled from Wednesday to Friday, will promote cooperation between the two countries, open new perspectives for their strategic cooperative partnership, and lift bilateral relations to a new height.

According to the ambassador, the leaders of the two countries are expected to lay out blueprint for enhancing bilateral relations at the strategic level and enrich the contents of their strategic cooperative partnership.

Le said that China and India, being the largest and the third largest economies in Asia respectively and enjoying fast growth rate, have huge potentials and a broad prospect for economic and trade cooperation.

During Xi's visit, the two countries are expected to sign some 20 agreements on cooperation in trade, investment, finance and infrastructure construction.

Le also noted that China and India are two great ancient civilizations, and that Xi's trip will uncover more commonalities between the two in the field of culture, particularly in terms of the ancient Silk Road.

The trip seeks to promote China-India exchanges in such fields as culture, sports, audio-video products, tourism, youths' activities, media, and think tanks, and will instill more dynamics into the on-going "Year of Friendly Exchanges."

On border issues, Le said special representatives of the two countries have held 17 rounds of talks since 2003, nailing down a "three-step" roadmap for solving them.

China and India have been pushing forward with the process of the negotiations under the agreed-upon guiding principles to find out a just, reasonable and mutually acceptable solution, the ambassador said.