China is also hoping for faster visa processing for better people-to-people interaction. “There needs to be more visits by artists, intellectuals, and thinkers between the two countries to bring us closer. A manganese mining company in Nagpur has collaborated with a Chinese firm to execute a project. It has 70 Chinese workers and a similar number of Indians. They go in teams, understand machines and work together. It is a perfect example of ‘Chini-Hindi Bhai Bhai’ that we want to spread,” said Qin Jie. He was referring to the Chinese company, China Coal No3, executing a project with Nagpur-based public sector undertaking, Manganese Ore India Limited (MOIL). Jie visited the company’s sites last month.
“We look forward to anointing Jinan as a sister city for Nagpur. The concept of sister cities came up after the visit of Chinese President Xi Ping in 2014. The matches were made on the basis of similarities, like Shanghai is the sister city for Mumbai. Like Nagpur, Jinan too is landlocked. The idea is to foster ties with cultural exchanges between the two cities,” he said, adding even Indian corporates have a presence in China and there’s scope for cooperation in a whole gamut of sectors. To a query on the US-India tariff deal, Jie said he preferred to talk only about Indo-Chinese cooperation. “There needs to be more cooperation in business and cultural fronts. That is what China is looking forward to at the coming BRICS summit that will be held in India,” he said.
