Indian official on President Xi's visit to India

President Xi Jinping will start his visit to India. Earlier, an official from India's embassy in Beijing says he is looking forward to bilateral cooperation in more areas than economy.

Prasanna Shrivastava, a political counsellor at the Embassy of India in China, at the China-India Youth Talks in Beijing on September 28, 2019. [Photo: China Plus]

Prasanna Shrivastava is the political counselor at the Embassy of India in China. At last month's China-India Youth Roundtable hosted by China Radio International in Beijing, he said that ties between China and India have been rapidly developing in recent years.

"We have a relationship which is really vast and multifaceted. It has been on an up-swing in recent years, and I see that the sky is the limit for this relationship. The two leaders are very focused and have been keeping quite a close contact and these things are very important to move this relationship forward."

He also believed that the people of both countries have a strong desire to move their bilateral ties forward, and that India's cultural icons like Bollywood films and yoga can have a role to play in helping Chinese people to better understand India.

"Well, I think the expectations are there on both sides. We see strong desire on both sides among the people to take our relationship forward, kind of, if we talk about the people-to-people, the kind of reception Bollywood movies get here, the kind of popularity yoga has here, it's reflective about the curiosity and appetite in the Chinese society to learn and appreciate more about India. I can reassure you that the same kind of desire is on the other side as well to know about China."

Zhou Heyang and Akhil Parashar from China Media Group speak to Prasanna Shrivastava (middle), the political counselor at the Embassy of India in China, at "China-India Youth Talks 2019" in Beijing on September 28, 2019. [Photo: China Plus]

Currently, over 20,000 young adults from India are studying in China, and nearly 2,000 Chinese are studying in India. Shrivastava said China and India are two populous countries with a combined population of more than 2.5 billion. However, the two sides have only about one million exchanges. Much work still needs to be done to promote exchanges between the two peoples.

Bilateral trade between China and India was worth 95 billion U.S. dollars last year, up 13 percent on the previous year. Shrivastava added that the two countries should not only focus on strengthening their economic ties, but also their cooperation in other areas.

"Both India and China are neighbors. They are both big and populous countries, and both emerging countries. So there are a lot of areas of commonalities where both countries can work together. Many of issues and areas in economy to developmental goals - all of those areas are right there on the table for the two countries to learn from each other."

He also signaled that the two countries could strengthen their cooperation in a growing number of multilateral organizations.