国内英语新闻:Senior CPC official concludes fruitful visit to India

BEIJING, Nov. 3 (Xinhua) -- Senior Communist Party of China (CPC) official Zhou Yongkang on Tuesday concluded a visit to India that helped promote development of mutual trust and bilateral cooperation between the two Asian nations.

Zhou, member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and also secretary of the Commission for Political and Legal Affairs of the CPC Central Committee, met Monday with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi, India's capital.

During the meeting, Zhou said strengthening political mutual trust with India was the key to deeper cooperation with the country and that the leaders of the two countries should often exchange views in great depth and with great frankness on major issues of mutual concern.

Zhou said China and India had a combined population of 2.5 billion and there existed a great space for developing cooperation in the economy and trade, and people-to-people and cultural exchanges.

He said both China and India faced the heavy task of developing their own economy, improving people's living standards and safeguarding social stability.

Zhou said, while China was making its 12th five-year plan for socioeconomic development in the 2011-2015 period and India making its 11th five-year plan, China wished to increase political trust with India, expand cooperation of mutual benefit, and deepen the strategic cooperative partnership with India.

Prime Minister Singh said the friendly relations between India and China played an extremely important role in promoting peace, stability and development in Asia and even in the whole world.

Zhou also met on Monday with ruling Indian National Congress party President Sonia Gandhi and party General Secretary Rahul Gandhi.

During the meeting, Zhou said the development of China and India provided opportunities rather than posed challenges to each other.

Both China and India believed the world was big enough to accommodate the common development of China and India, Zhou said, adding the Chinese side was happy for every achievement that India made in its development.

As for the China-India trade, which is expected to reach 60 billion U.S. dollars this year, Zhou said there was still great potential for the two big emerging powers to tap.

He hoped both sides could deepen the strategic cooperative partnership further, strengthen practical cooperation in various fields, and increase personnel exchanges at different levels.

Sonia Gandhi said India had always paid great attention to China's development and welcomed the improvement in the living standard of the Chinese people.

She said India's and China's development had speeded up the recovery of the world economy in the face of the international financial crisis and she hoped both sides could strengthen coordination and cooperation further and tackle various global issues in a better way and maintain the favorable momentum of development.

Zhou also met with Indian Minister of External Affairs S. M. Krishna,the president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian People's Party) Nitin Gadkari and leaders of three left-wing parties on Monday.

During a seminar on China-India ties on Monday, Zhou asked for joint efforts to promote China-India relations.

"It is an inevitable trend of history to consolidate and develop the peace and friendship between China and India," Zhou said.

"We should extract nutrition and wisdom from history to persist in maintaining peace, friendship and mutually beneficial cooperation, and to be good neighbors, good friends and good partners forever," he said.

He made a five-point proposal on the further development of China-India relations, including promoting political mutual trust, expanding cooperation in economics and trade, boosting friendly exchanges, strengthening international cooperation, and promoting friendly consultation.

Before wrapping up his three-day visit, Zhou on Tuesday visited India's IT bellwether Infosys Technologies in Bangalore, known as the Silicon Valley of India.