Ambassador Bambawale's Interview with China Central Television-4
(telecast on 06 June 2018)
Click here to watch the Interview 

Q: Hello, your Excellency Mr Ambassador, it is the first time that India will join the SCO Summit as a new full member, what’s the expectation of India in this Summit?

A: We are very happy and delighted to be a member of SCO, this time our Prime Minister Mr Modi will attend this SCO Summit in Qingdao on 9th and 10th June, we hope that this summit will be very successful, we are confident that it will be very successful, and we know that China will host a very successful Qingdao Summit of SCO, so we are very much looking forward to it.

Q: In your opinion, what’s the meaning of Shanghai spirit in now this world? What kind of benefits that SCO will bring to the member?

 A: You are absolutely right when you are saying Shanghai Spirit is very important, and Shanghai spirit stands for multipolarity, for countries with different system to live together to have peaceful co-existence. And we believe that the message which will come out from Qingdao Summit is that important big countries, which are member of Shanghai Cooperation Organization can peacefully co-exist, despite the differences in their systems and that they can work together. And I think one of the other important point which will come out is that unilateralism not necessary in this world, multilateralism and learning to live with each other is the important  message that will come out from Qingdao.

Q: We see a very positive result from Wuhan Summit, what do you think of head of state diplomacy improvement to the bilateral relationship?

A: I think the Wuhan Summit, the informal summit, between President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Modi was an effort by the leaders of India and China, two large countries in the world with huge populations, to talk to each other, to understand each other, to promote cooperation between the two countries. Most importantly, it was the strategic communication between the leaders of two countries. 
And as the result of their discussions in Wuhan, the two leaders have arrived at certain consensus. The first and most import consensus is that India and China are partners in progress and in economic development, the second most import consensus is that there are many more commonalities between India and China than differences. And we will work together on these commonalities. Of course, there are some differences between us, and we also work on these differences to ensure that two countries will continue to progress and prosper together. We are not going to be away from each other or apart from each other, we are going to do it together.

Q: As we all known that Indian movies are very popular in China, more and more Chinese begin to be interested in Indian culture. What do you think the two countries could do to promote people to people exchanges?

A: You are very correct that it’s important between India and China to have more people to people exchanges, one of the ways to do that is as what you said through movies, we are very very happy to see that Indian Bollywood movies are becoming popular in China. The important point here is by seeing Indian movies, Chinese people understand India better, and by understanding India better, there will be more mutual trust between the people of India and the people of China. Similarly we want to see more Chinese movies also, so we can understand China better. 
And I think there will be one aspect both governments should work very hard for building up people to people cooperation, that is tourism. I think, We must expand tourism between India and China, have more flights, have more tourists going to each other's country, that way we will understand each other better and we will trust each other more. 

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