Chinese, Indian leaders to meet

President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will hold an informal meeting on Friday and Saturday in Wuhan, Hubei province, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Sunday.

The two leaders will have "communication of a strategic nature concerning the once-in-a-century shifts going on in the world", Wang told a news conference after his Sunday afternoon talk with visiting Indian Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj.

Xi and Modi also will exchange views on overall, long-term and strategic issues regarding the future development of China-India relations, Wang said.

Swaraj is in China to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organization foreign ministers meeting on Tuesday.

Her trip also marks the latest episode of recent, frequent official contacts between Beijing and New Delhi, including Xi's phone conversation with Modi last month.

The development of relations between the two countries involves the prosperity and progress of roughly one-third of the world's population, something unprecedented in human history, Wang said.

"Both countries are natural partners in cooperation and our common interests far outweigh our differences," Wang said.

The upcoming leaders' meeting will deepen bilateral mutual trust, and the leaders will reach strategic conclusion about the global situation and the development of the two countries, Wang said.

Swaraj said both countries are major countries and emerging economies, and their good relations matter to the region.

The Indian minister said she and Wang are satisfied with the progress made in bilateral ties and exchanges in various field, which are conducive for the upcoming leaders' meeting.

Analysts said that the political ties between the two have shown signs of improvement at the same time that their economic links are enjoying robust growth. Trade between the two reached $84.4 billion last year, a year-on-year increase of 20.3 percent.

Commerce Minister Zhong Shan told Indian media earlier this month that China's imports from India increased by roughly 40 percent last year.

Lin Minwang, a professor on South Asian studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, said the two sides are working hard to further consolidate the recently projected "new look" of bilateral ties as positive interactions are increasing between Beijing and New Delhi.