China and India to set up military hotline

China and India have agreed to begin military exchanges and establish a hotline linking army commanders on either side of their disputed Himalayan border in the latest effort by Beijing to cool tensions with its largest neighbours.

The confidence-building measures between the Chinese and Indian militaries were among more than 20 agreements, also encompassing the environment and infrastructure, signed on the second day of Narendra Modi's three-day visit to China. On Friday the Indian prime minister met Chinese Premier Li Keqiang in Beijing, a day after he arrived in Xi'an for meetings with President Xi Jinping.

Mr Modi and Mr Li's breakthrough on military exchanges comes less than a year after People's Liberation Army troops crossed a so-called Line of Actual Control in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, at the same time as Mr Xi was paying a state visit to New Delhi.

"That created a great negative impact in India with regard to China's long-term intentions," TCA Rangachari, a former Indian diplomat and Sinologist, told reporters in Beijing ahead of Mr Modi's arrival.

"How is it that Xi Jinping, who is head of [the Chinese Communist party's] Central Military Commission and therefore commander of the PLA, visits a country at the same time troops are where they should not be?"

Chinese state media did not immediately report on the military agreements reached between the two sides, reflecting the sensitivity of the territorial dispute. Greetings sent by Mr Modi ahead of his visit on Weibo, China's Twitter equivalent, were met with a number of chauvinistic and belittling replies from Chinese nationalists.

"It shouldn't be difficult to build these military exchange mechanisms and Modi's visit has alleviated the tense border situation, but we are far from resolving the issue," said Jin Canrong, professor of international studies at Renmin University in Beijing.

Neither Beijing nor New Delhi wants the border dispute to disrupt emerging economic ties, with trade between the regional giants rising from just a few billion dollars a decade ago to $73bn in 2012. Two-way trade has slipped over recent years, however, and Mr Modi has expressed concerns about China's large trade surplus with India.

Friday's accord represented the second time in six months that Beijing has attempted to cool regional tensions, after agreeing with Tokyo in November to share information about maritime patrols around the disputed Senkaku Islands, known in China as Diaoyu, in the East China Sea.

India has warm ties with both Japan and the US, and signed a joint communique this year with Washington expressing the importance of freedom of navigation through the South China Sea.

China asserts sovereignty over the entire area despite rival claims by the Philippines and Vietnam. Beijing's construction of airfields and other infrastructure on disputed islets has sparked protests from Washington ahead of this weekend's visit to the Chinese capital by John Kerry, US secretary of state.

Tensions are also running high along China's border with Myanmar, after state media reported that shells fired in clashes between Myanmar's military and separatist rebels had hit a Chinese village on Thursday night, wounding five people. In March, the PLA promised a "resolute" response to such incidents after another stray bomb from the conflict in Myanmar killed four Chinese villagers.

Additional reporting by Wan Li

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