BEIJING: China and Japan on Wednesday (Jun 5) congratulated Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi following his ruling alliance’s victory in India’s general election.
Beijing said it was “ready to work” with its neighbour.
A “healthy and stable China-India relationship is in the common interest of both sides and is also conducive to peace and development in the region and the world”, foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told a regular press conference.
“The Chinese side would like to congratulate” Modi’s BJP party and his National Democratic Alliance (NDA), she added.
Modi has dominated Indian politics since coming to power in 2014, but he will for the first time need the support of regional allies after his party failed to secure an outright majority.
The NDA won 293 seats in the 543-member lower house of parliament, more than the 272 needed to form a government.
Modi’s BJP won 240 seats on its own, a weakened verdict which could complicate the government’s reform agenda.
“China is ready to work with India to promote the healthy and stable development of relations between the two countries, in the fundamental interests of the two countries and peoples, with an eye to the big picture and a view to the future,” Mao said.
Both countries have regularly accused each other of trying to seize territory along their unofficial divide, known as the Line of Actual Control, and have clashed a number of times in the region.
India has been wary of its northern neighbour’s growing military assertiveness and disputes over the two Asian giants’ 3,500km shared frontier have been a perennial source of tension.
China claims all of India’s northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, considering it part of Tibet, and the Asian giants fought a full-scale border war in 1962.
“IMPORTANT PARTNER”
Japan’s top government spokesman Yoshimasa Hayashi similarly congratulated the ruling coalition led by Modi.
“India is an important partner for the realisation of a free and open Indo-Pacific, and we will continue to strengthen the Japan-India relationship,” he told reporters.
Japan and India are both part of the so-called “Quad” grouping which also includes the United States and Australia.
The Indian prime minister also attended the G7 summit in Hiroshima last year, despite India not being part of the bloc.
