Chinese President Xi Jinping is visiting India to attend the BRICS Summit, which begins in New Delhi today. He is expected to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and discuss ways to improve relations between India and China. Amid this, China Southern Airlines has announced that it will restart direct flights between Delhi and Guangzhou after a gap of six years. The airline is one of China’s major carriers. The direct Delhi–Guangzhou flight service is scheduled to begin on September 21. However, the airline has not yet announced how many flights will operate each day or their timings. More details are expected to be released soon. Relations between India and China have faced tensions in recent years, especially after the 2020 Galwan Valley clash between soldiers of the two countries in Ladakh.
The incident affected diplomatic relations and led to a pause in several exchanges between the two nations.India-China relations have recently shown signs of improvement. Xi Jinping’s visit to India and his meeting with Prime Minister Modi are being seen as important steps towards strengthening bilateral ties. The announcement of the direct Delhi–Guangzhou flight service is also being viewed as a positive development in India-China relations. Following high-level discussions between Modi and Xi at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in China last year, some suspended flight services between the two countries were also resumed. The restoration of direct air connectivity is expected to make travel between India and China easier and could further support people-to-people and business ties between the two countries.
