India and China Agree to Work Together to Cope with Financial Crisis

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Oct. 30 – Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said during an interview that India and China have agreed to work together to deal with the financial crisis, reports the Indian Express.

Mr. Singh was recently in Beijing to attend the Asia-Europe (ASEM) Summit that brought together world leaders to discuss the steps to be taken to address the effects of the global credit crisis. It was the first time that a high-ranking official from India would attend the summit.

On the sidelines of the event, Mr. Singh had meetings with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Chinese President Hu Jintao, President of Mongolia Nambaryn Enkhbayar, President of Bulgaria Georgi Parvarov, in addition to Italian and Vietnamese Prime Ministers Romano Prodi and Nguyen Tan Dung.

In his meeting with President Hu Jintao, they discussed that bilateral trade between China and India is now worth more than US$40 billion with prospects of trade increasing to US$60 billion by 2010.

Both leaders also agreed to cooperate on the issues of trans-border rivers and border disputes. A meeting to discuss these issues is also slated for next year.

Mr. Singh said that, “We also discussed the possibilities of our two countries working together in regional and international forums and I drew his attention to the initial statement that Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and I had signed in January in which we had expressed that there are immense possibilities for the two countries working together to coordinate our thinking at regional and multilateral forums.”

Both of us agreed that this is a crisis in which India and China should remain in contact and even work with like-minded countries to find pragmatic solutions to the problems that have arisen.”