China to pay great importance to India: Xi Jinping

China's new leader Xi Jinping has assured Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that Beijing would continue to pay great importance to developing relations with India as the bilateral cooperation has brought substantial benefit to people of both nations.

China will pay great importance to developing relations with India and expects to carry out close cooperation with India to create a brighter future of their bilateral relations, Xi wrote in a letter to Singh which was delivered to him by top Chinese diplomat Dai Bingguo on January 11th in New Delhi.

State-run Xinhua news agency quoted Xi as saying that China-India relations have maintained stable development in the past few years, which has brought about substantial benefits to the two countries and the two peoples. The world has enough space for China and India to achieve common development, and the world also needs common development Xi said in the letter.

Dai, the chief negotiator of the India-China border talks was in New Delhi last week to attend the Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa (BRICS) top security officials meeting. Xi's letter was stated to be in response to a letter from Singh after his election as General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) succeeding Hu Jintao.