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BEIJING: China on Thursday ruled out any possibility of bilateral talks between Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar during BRICS Foreign Ministers meeting on the current border conflict as it would only focus cooperation among the member states and international situation.
“The meeting will focus international situation and BRICS cooperation. I am not aware of any separate meeting between the Chinese and Indian sides,” Chinese Foreign Ministry’s Spokesperson Hua Chunying said during her regular briefing.
Wang Yi and foreign minister of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa will attend the meeting via video link at the invitation of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday.
While reacting to India’s ban on Chinese apps, she said that India’s ban against Chinese apps not only damaged the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese investors and service providers, but also harmed the interests of Indian consumers.
“The Indian side decided to ban some great and popular Chinese apps. Indian user’s rights and interest are first harmed. And, Chinese business’s rights and interests will also be harmed. So, What India has done is not beneficial to anyone,” she added.
India on Wednesday banned over 100 Chinese mobile apps, including wildly popular mobile game PUBG, amid fresh border tension between the two countries. Hua Chunying said she had noted that the US state department on the same day said that India banned more than 100 Chinese apps and called on other countries to join India to roll out the clean network initiative.
“So, I don’t know if there is any co-relation or interaction between India and the US. But India is an ancient civilization with wise people. They should know what the US has done in Cyber Security for example Dirtbox, Prism, Irritant Horn, Muscular and under-sea cable tapping. Indian people must have the wisdom to tell whether the US practice on Cyber security is clean or dirty,” she added.
The spokesperson said that the Chinese side hoped India could stay committed to its precious independence decision making, adding, “We hope the people of China and the people of India can conduct normal exchange or cooperation in all sectors. And they should not, because of temporary short sightedness hurt the long-term interests of both countries and the peoples”.
She observed that there had been some unfriendly voices in India drawing some concern and added, “As I said both are ancient civilizations with splendid cultures that we are proud of, and the exchange between the two sides have been going on for thousands of years”.
