New Delhi: India and China are all set to hold the first ever meeting of the India-China High Level Mechanism on Cultural and People-to-People Exchanges. The meeting will be held in Delhi on December 21 and will be attended by external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj and her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi. Yi will be in India till December 24.
The move is being seen as significant as it aims to strengthen bilateral cultural ties and focus more on promoting greater people-to-people exchanges. The meeting comes eight months after this mechanism was established during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s meeting with President Xi Jinping in Wuhan. In a statement, the Ministry of External Affairs said that focus would be on areas such as tourism, art, films, media, culture, among other things.
The cultural meet comes at a time when Modi is working to seek re-election next year. Re-affirming ties with China before that will be significant as ties between both countries had hit an all-time low during the Doklam standoff. The two neighbors were engaged in a military standoff along the Arunachal border. There have been visits by Indian authorities to China, including those of foreign secretary Vijay Gokhale and external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj.
Modi met Xi earlier this month on the sidelines of the G-20 summit here and the two leaders concurred there had been a perceptible improvement in bilateral relations, even as they looked to build on a thaw in ties after a standoff on the border last year.
At the meeting, Modi and Xi discussed joint efforts to further enhance mutual trust and friendship between the two neighbours. This was their fourth meeting this year, including Wuhan, once at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit held in June in China's Qingdao and the second time at the BRICS summit in South Africa's Johannesburg in July.
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