India should engage new China confidently: PM

PM said India should engage the new China confidently and constructively in a spirit of national consensus.

New Delhi: As China witnesses a transition in leadership, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday said India should engage the new China confidently and constructively in a spirit of national consensus. Singh said the new leaders of China had conveyed to him their desire to strengthen the strategic communication and to forge a better future for bilateral relations. "We will continue to manage our overall relations with China with maturity, recognising opportunities for common development and convergence of interests with China on many regional and global issues," he said.

"The new leaders of China have conveyed to me their desire to strengthen our strategic communication and to forge a better future for our relations," Singh said. "This is also the goal of our Government. We should engage the new China confidently and constructively in a spirit of national consensus," the Prime Minister said. China`s old guard led by President Hu Jintao bowed out of power at the National Peoples` Congress (NPC) that began yesterday in Beijing paving way for new leader Xi Jinping to assume charge. The two-week long NPC is set to formally elect 59-year-old Xi as President, 57-year-old Li Keqiang as Premier and other top leaders, whose names have already been finalised by the ruling Communist Party of China in its Plenum. PTI