China welcomes Indian Air Force chief Arup Raha's comments on ties

BEIJING: China today welcomed Indian Air Force chief Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha's remark that China should not be viewed as an adversary and called for deepening of strategic bilateral relationship.

"Noted the positive remarks made by Air Force commander of India. We believe that we should keep deepening the strategic partnership between the two countries and push for new progress of bilateral relationship," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said.

She also said that instead of threatening each other, they should cooperate as they are the biggest developing countries and most dynamic emerging markets in the world.

"We should be long-term strategic partners to each other," she said.

Raha last week said India should not look at China as an adversary anymore.

"We are in the same region, we have common interests. I don't think that we should look at them as adversaries anymore," Raha had said.

Stating that two rising economic or military powers can co-exist, Raha had said, the adversarial stance should now change into a more friendly stance.

Hua also recalled Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi's trip this year to China.

"As for differences and the boundary dispute, both of us agreed to properly manage the differences through the border related management regime to create favourable environment for the improvement of bilateral relations," she said.

"We would like to make joint efforts with the Indian side to deepen the political mutual trust as well as mutual beneficial cooperation so as to ensure that a bilateral relationship will be developing on the right track and deliver benefits to the peoples and the whole region," she said.