Beijing, June 13: The upcoming visit of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to China would provide New Delhi and Beijing, joint enunciators of Panchsheel, an opportunity to put aside their differences and seek common ground and further step up bilateral ties, a veteran Chinese media expert has said. "The upcoming visit by Prime Minister Vajpayee would be a historical progress in our bilateral ties," all-China journalists association president Shao Huaze told a news agency in an interview, ahead of Vajpayee's official visit to China from June 22 to 27 at the invitation of Chinese premier wen Jiabao. "We have had some disputes in the 1960s and differences in the past. Now the time has come to put aside the differences and look to the future so as to further step up our good neighbourly relations based on the five principles of peaceful co-existence, which we jointly enunciated in the 50's". Shao, who recently visited India as guest of external affairs ministry, noted with satisfaction that bilateral ties between the two Asian giants have developed "smoothly" in recent years and that defence minister George Fernandes also paid a successful visit to China in April. Bureau Report