China foreign minister Wang Yi set to visit India in December

New Delhi: Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi is set to visit India in December to co-chair a meeting on building closer people ties, implementing a decision taken earlier this year by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese president Xi Jinping aimed at improving relations after their 73-day military face off on Bhutan’s Doklam plateau last year.

Modi and Xi had met in the Chinese city of Wuhan in April where they decided on a number of steps to bring down tensions and normalize ties following the standoff. This was followed by meetings between the two leaders on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in Qingdao in June and the BRICS leaders’ summit in Johannesburg in July.

Both countries are looking at a series of high-level visits, including those of the Chinese ministers of defence and public security to India, Indian foreign secretary Vijay Gokhale had said after the Johannesburg meeting.

Gokhale had also said that the foreign ministers of the two countries would meet in New Delhi in October to take forward a plan to step up people to people interaction.

“Both countries are working very hard to implement the consensus reached by the two leaders (Modi and Xi)” at Wuhan, Chinese ambassador to India Luo Zhaohui said on Friday.

“In December this year, the first meeting of the high level people-to-people exchanges mechanism will be launched in New Delhi,” Luo said at an event bringing together pilgrims and travel agents who have undertaken or organized the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra to Tibet.

Wang Yi will visit India for the people to people exchange mechanism meeting that could not be arranged in October because of scheduling problems, two people familiar with the developments said.

The two special representatives discussing the India-China boundary problem are also to meet this year.