New Delhi: President Pranab Mukherjee on Tuesday will begin his four-day visit to China with an aim to strengthen ties between the two Asian economic giants as he will deliberate on a range of key issues including the contentious ones with the Chinese leadership.
Mukherjee is likely to raise the issues of China blocking India's bid to get a UN ban on JeM chief Masood Azhar and its stand that New Delhi must sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to get membership of the elite Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).
Responding to Mukherjee's remark that India wants fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable settlement to solve the border issue, China said both the countries have been taking positive steps to manage the border dispute and that it is ready to "accelerate" talks to resolve the vexed issue "at an early date".
China is ready to work with India to accelerate negotiations and resolve this historic issue at an early date to move forward bilateral relations, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said.
The President will be meeting his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, Premier Le Keqiang and other top leaders.
This will be the first visit of Mukherjee to China as President though he had visited the country a number of times in different capacities. The last Presidential visit to China was by Pratibha Patil in 2010.
Ahead of his visit, Mukherjee said China joining hands with India in the fight against terrorism will have "its own impact", indicating that the two countries must comer together to deal with the challenge.
Mukherjee will begin his visit by arriving in the highly industrialised Chinese city of Guangzhou tomorrow. The city which has strong business links with India has an economy of over $1 trillion.
He will be the first Indian leader to visit Guangzhou where Chan Buddhism originated and later spread to Japan and Korea.
Besides interacting with the Indian community, which has over 3,000 businessmen, Mukherjee will also addressIndia- China Business Forum to highlight the investment opportunities in India.
There, the President will have meetings with the Governor who is also the party secretary and attend a lunch for him in his honour.
On the second leg of the visit, he will travel to Beijing where he will hold wide-ranging talks with the Chinese leadership on key bilateral, regional and global issues.
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