AMN
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping today held crucial talks at Xian city in China. In their 90 minutes talks the two leaders discussed wide ranging issues including peace and tranquility on the border, trade imbalance and investment climate.
Briefing media after the talks, foreign Secretary, S Jaishankar said the atmosphere was very comfortable and it was building on the chemistry between the two leaders that started last year. He said strengthening trust, increasing convergence, connectivity and strengthening counter terrorism cooperation between the two countries were the other issues that were discussed. On international front, UN Security Council reforms and India’s membership to the Nuclear Suppliers Group also came up for discussion.
Later, President Jinping accompanied Prime Minister Modi to Giant Wild Goose Pagoda. Built in the sixth century, the Pagoda has strong Indian links. Great Chinese traveller Xuanzang, after returning from India with Buddhist scriptures, came back here and translated them into Chinese language. Buddha figurines brought by him were also kept here. This is a holy place for Buddhists and a masterpiece of Buddhist architecture. Both the leaders stayed together for about 45 minutes at the Pagoda.
In the evening, Prime Minister was given a grand welcome at the South City Wall in traditional Tang Dynasty style. President Jinping also hosted a banquet for Prime Minister. The Prime Minister presented to the Chinese President replicas of a stone casket of Buddhist relics and a stone statue of Buddha that were excavated from a 3rd -4th century stupa at Dev Ni Mori near Vadnagar in Gujarat.
Prime Minister also presented archaeological drawings of excavations at Vadnagar which was one of the places visited by Xuanzang. The site is referred to as Anandpur in Xuanzang’s writings and recent excavations point to the existence of a thriving Buddhist centre at Vadnagar way back in 2nd century AD. Recent excavations at Vadnagar have revealed a burnt brick structure that has been identified as a Buddhist monastery on the basis of its peculiar plan and the antiquities recovered.
Prime Minister has reached capital Beijing now.
Earlier, Prime Minister Narendra Modi who is on a three day visit to China has today tweeted about his visit to Terracotta Warriors and Daxingshan Buddihist Temple in Xian on Chinese social media ‘weibo’. He posted a message that he was happy to see the enthusiasm of chinese people and Xian city has warmly received him.
The Prime Minister in another tweet said that the Daxingshan temple was beautiful and he would cherish his visit. Modi has also posted his photograph taken at the temple on the weibo social media. It is known that the Prime Minister opened his account on ‘weibo’ on the eve of his visit to China and his tweets are receiving good response from the Chinese people.