Xi meets Indian parliament speaker

Visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping met in New Delhi on Friday with Sumitra Mahajan, speaker of the Lok Sabha, the lower house of India's parliament.[Special coverage]

Calling Mahajan a veteran leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), or the Indian People's Party, Xi recalled that China-India relations developed comprehensively and rapidly when the BJP was India's ruling party in the early period of this century.

China and India, as the two largest developing countries and emerging-market economies, share identical development goals, similar development philosophies and compatible development strategies, Xi said.

The two countries can complement each other's advantages and boost cooperation to build a closer development partnership, said the president, who also called for more people-to-people and cultural exchanges to deepen the traditional friendship between the two peoples.

Applauding the friendly cooperative relations between the National People's Congress of China and the Lok Sabha, or the House of the People, and between the Communist Party of China and the BJP, Xi urged the two sides to continue to strengthen exchanges to cement mutual trust, cooperation and friendship.

For her part, Mahajan said that Indian people and Chinese people enjoy a long history of close friendly exchanges, and that the Indian people appreciate China's development achievements.

The BJP and Indian parliamentarians are willing to increase exchanges with the Chinese side to share governance experience and contribute to the development of bilateral ties, she added.

India is the last stop of Xi's four-nation tour in Central and South Asia, which has already taken him to Tajikistan, Maldives and Sri Lanka. In Tajikistan, he also attended a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.