India and China cannot progress into each other’s views if they are not empathizing with each other, India’s envoy said.
Indian Ambassador to China, Gautam Bambawale’s, gave remarks during his address at the 8th India-China dialogue between Ananta Aspen Centre and China Reform Forum.
“An important principle in India-China relations is that the necessity of being sensitive to the opposite country’s aspirations and interests,” Bambawale said.
“In the absence of such sensitivity, we may ask one another but little progress is going to be made if we don’t empathise with the opposite side’s point of view,” he said.
He mentioned the recent informal summit between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping at Wuhan and gave a remark “both leaders spoke freely and frankly to each other on strategic and over-arching issues concerning the international and regional situations also as on India-China relations”.
“I have always maintained that if India and China need to live and progress together, especially within the 21st Century, it’s essential that we engage with one another seriously and ask one another extremely frankly and candidly,” he said.
He said Modi and Xi concluded that there are many factors of commonality between India and China and that we need to give a thinking on few grounds, at the Wuhan summit.
The envoy asked the delegates of both the teams to increase the gain of mutual trust and interest. Hwas very frank about this statement in the summit.
“Naturally, like all two countries, there also are differences between us. We can only resolve these differences, over time, if we speak to every other about them in an open manner,” he said.
“I would really like to ascertain a resumption of military exchanges between India and China also as strategic communication between our top military commanders. This will be good for maintaining peace and tranquillity within the India-China border areas,” he said.
