Chinese Vice President Li Yuanchao who is on a five-day visit to India arrived in New Delhi on Thursday night. He will hold talks with his Indian counterpart Hamid Ansari on Friday in the national capital during which, both sides would ink MoUs in culture and water resources.
Li, the first Chinese vice president to visit India in over 60 years, will also call on President Pranab Mukherjee and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup said Li’s visit to India is a part of the “intensification of high-level visits and ties between the sides”.
Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping have met five times and Modi has met Premier Li Keqiang twice. Ansari paid a visit to China in June 2014.
Li was in Aurangabad and visited the Ajanta Caves on Wednesday. On Thursday, he was in Kolkata where he met West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and the state governor. He also visited Jorasankho and Thakurbari, the ancestral home of Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore.
Swarup said Li’s visit highlights the deep cultural linkages between the two sides, which are ancient and contemporary.
Tagore visited China in 1924 and is remembered there.