Defense minister plans to visit India

Chinese State Councilor and Defense Minister General Wei Fenghe will visit India this year in a sign of recovering military relations after the Doklam standoff last year.

“Defense departments of China and India are communicating about the visit. Related information will be released at proper time,” defense ministry spokesman Ren Guoqiang said at a routine press conference on Thursday.

The general’s visit will be a response to the invitation of his Indian counterpart Nirmala Sitharaman, Ren noted.

The visit will be Wei’s third overseas trip since he became defense minister in March. India is his fourth overseas destination. He visited Russia and the Republic of Belarus in April and Cambodia in June.

“It signals that relations between the People’s Liberation Army of China and Indian army have generally recovered… China attaches great importance to relations between the two armies,” Qian Feng, a research fellow at the National Strategy Institute of Tsinghua University, told the Global Times on Thursday.

“The military relationship has entered a positive development track with overall improvement and a warming trend in political relations between the two countries.”

“The two armies are actively implementing the achievements of the two countries’ leaders at the Wuhan Summit,” Qian said.

Wei’s pending visit to India showed the visit to the country in early July by Liu Xiaowu, deputy commander of the Western Theater Command was successful, Qian said.

Liu visited India from July 2 to 6, where he forged a consensus with his Indian counterparts in practicing the consensus reached by two countries’ leaders, enhancing the control of risk at the border area, expanding joint tactical drills, strengthening culture and sport interactions between the border defense forces, and jointly safeguarding peace and stability at border are, Ren said.