'Trade Is The Most Effective Lubricant'

I would like to share with you my visit to Shanxi and mycall on  Premier Zhu Rongji. I had a good meeting with Premier Zhu Rongjiand the Chinese side has already issued a press release on this. We haddiscussed a number of issues during Premier Zhu Rongji's visit to India and Iinformed him of the progress on certain issues.

During Premier Zhu Rongji's visit, the question of Indiabecoming an Approved Destination Status country was discussed. The Chinese sidehas already taken a decision. We have had fairly extensive discussions oneconomic aspects. I would like to reveal some rather astounding statistics-theturnover of bilateral trade between China and S Korea amounted to US$35 bn lastyear, while with India it was only US$ 3.5 bn, which is only one-tenth. PremierZhu Rongji and I agreed we should take very determined action on this and heemphasised that there is already a Joint Economic Group on promotion of tradeand it should be activated so that during the visit of our Prime Minister in thelatter part of 2002, real and discernible steps can be taken. We agreed that there is a need for bothvalue-addition and volume-addition in bilateral trade.

Premier Zhu Rongji described Shanxi as the `poorest ofProvinces' and that it is the second from the bottom. Premier Zhu Rongji saidthat what India and China need is `comprehensive knowledge of each other'. Ifully endorse this. Knowledge of each other's countries is limited to thecapital city and one or two other cities. We also talked on political issuessuch as clarification of the LAC and held discussions on a range of bilateral, regional and international issues.

Question & Answer Session:

Q: What does the Approved Destination Status ADS) signify?

EAM: China does not allow its citizens to travel overseasto a country until that country has ADS. This is one of the difficulties inpromoting travel between India and China. It is not possible for Chinese tovisit India unless India is in the list of ADS countries. Once this is done, itwould considerably free movement between both countries. I said that if people from India and China were travelling to each other's countries evenbefore the invention of the combustion engine, rail and aircraft, there is noreason why we cannot do this now.

Q : What are the areas of priority for trade?

EAM: We should move away from fixed items of trade. Chinaimports grains and India exports it. There is a certain kind of inertia and notenough aggressive trading by Indians, who are unable to break barriers. We needto think beyond minerals and ores. Why should only Australia be exporting grainsto China and not India? I told Vice Premier Qian Qichen and Foreign MinisterTang Jiaxuan that trade is the most effective lubricant for bilateral relations.The MEA is committed to developing trade and I have asked the Missions to reportthe efforts made by them to increase the volume of trade.