India’s foreign minister sees progress in China ties on first visit since 2020

Login

Register

http://www.clubofmozambique.com/

India’s foreign minister sees progress in China ties on first visit since 2020

8:42 CAT | 15 Jul 2025

Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, in Beijing on Monday. [Photo: Xinhua]

India’s foreign minister said removing “restrictive trade measures and roadblocks” is essential to improving ties between New Delhi and Beijing, in a veiled reference to China’s export controls on rare earths.

“Measures towards normalizing our people–to–people exchanges can certainly foster mutually-beneficial cooperation,” India’s External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar told his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in Beijing on Monday. “It is also essential in this context that restrictive trade measures and roadblocks are avoided,” he added, according to a statement released by the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi.

While the minister did not mention rare earths directly, his remarks come amid rising tensions after China — which controls about 90% of the world’s rare earths processing — tightened export controls as part of its trade war with the US. The move has disrupted supply chains for global automakers, including those operating in India.

Despite emerging tensions over rare earths, the world’s two most populous nations have been working to stabilize ties over the past nine months.

Bilateral relations have been “steadily improving” since Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in Kazan last October, Jaishankar said during a meeting with the Chinese Vice President Han Zheng in Beijing earlier in the day.

The Indian minister is on his first trip to China since the deadly border clashes between the two Asian neighbours in 2020.

According to Xinhua News Agency, Han emphasized that a “dragon-elephant tango” — or a harmonious relationship — aligns with the interests of both countries, highlighting their roles as major developing nations and key members of the Global South. The dragon and elephant are common stand-ins for China and India, respectively.

Jaishankar’s visit is the latest in a series of high-profile trips this year by Indian officials to China as both sides seek to repair strained ties. In June, India’s Defence Minister Rajnath Singh visited China to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’s defence ministers’ meeting in Qingdao. The officials are likely laying the groundwork for a potential visit by Modi to the SCO leaders’ summit this fall.

Relations between the two nations, strained since deadly border clashes in 2020, began to improve after Xi and Modi met at the BRICS summit in Russia last year. Earlier this year, the two agreed to resume an annual pilgrimage to the Tibet Autonomous Region, a key sign of improving ties between the nuclear-armed neighbours.

Source: Bloomberg