Chinese State Councilor and Defense Minister General Wei Fenghe will visit India in August in a sign of recovering military relations after the 73-day Doklam standoff last year.
“Defense departments of China and India are communicating about the visit. Related information will be released at proper time,” defense ministry spokesman Ren Guoqiang told a routine press briefing in Beijing on Thursday.
The general’s visit is at the invitation of his Indian counterpart, Nirmala Sitharaman. This will be his third overseas trip since he became defense minister in March. India is his fourth overseas destination. He visited Russia and the Republic of Belarus in April and Cambodia in June.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping who met on the sidelines of BRICS summit in Johannesburg, South Africa have viewed Wei Fenghe’s forthcoming India visit as a part of the efforts to maintain the “momentum” generated by their recent meetings.
It was their third time in nearly three months after their two-day informal summit in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late April and a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Summit in Qingdao, China in June. These meetings have given a new strength to bilateral ties and also provided new opportunities for cooperation.
“It is important to maintain this momentum and for this we should, at our level, regularly review our relationship and give proper instructions whenever required,” Modi told Xi.
Chinese side is ready to work with the Indian side to carry forward the fresh impetus of bilateral relations since their informal Wuhan meeting, President Xi was quoted as saying by Xinhua news agency. He also called for strengthening of strategic communication, increased mutual trust, promotion of practical cooperation, as well as cultural and people-to-people exchanges, strengthen dialogue and properly manage differences, it said.
“It (Wei’s visit to Delhi) signals that relations between the People’s Liberation Army of China and Indian army have generally recovered… China attaches great importance to relations between the two armies,” Qian Feng, a research fellow at the National Strategy Institute of Tsinghua University, told the Global Times.
According to him, the military relationship has entered “a positive development track” with overall improvement and “a warming trend in political relations” between the two countries.
“The two armies are actively implementing the achievements of the two countries’ leaders at the Wuhan Summit,” Qian said.
Liu Xiaowu, deputy commander of the Western Theater Command visited India from July 2 to 6, where he forged a consensus with his Indian counterparts in practicing the Wuhan consensus. While Qian has described Liu’s India visit as successful, the official spokesman Ren held the view that the visit helped to enhancing the control of risk at the border area, and expanding joint tactical drills, besides strengthening culture and sport interactions between the border defense forces.