China, India Announce $22 Billion In Business Deals, Pledge To Resolve Border Issue

China and India signed trade and cooperation deals cumulatively worth over $22 billion during a high-level diplomatic visit, an Indian official said on Saturday. Namgya C. Khampa of the Indian Embassy in Beijing said the deals covered areas including renewable energy, ports, financing and industrial parks, Reuters reported.

The agreements come at the end of a three-day visit to China by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"The agreements have a bilateral commercial engagement in sectors like renewable energy, industrial parks, power, steel, logistics finance and media and entertainment," Khampa said, according to Reuters.

Modi met the CEOs of 22 major Chinese companies in Shanghai on Friday, where he said he hoped the two countries could cooperate more closely. “Our cooperation not only benefits the two countries, but also sends a positive signal to the world," Modi said, according to Xinhua.

On Friday, Modi and China’s Premier Li Keqiang agreed to work towards a solution to an ongoing border dispute that has consistently undermined relations between the world’s two most populous nations.

China’s President Xi Jinping told Modi that the two countries "must work together to enhance mutual trust, control our differences and problems to avoid them interfering with bilateral relations,” the BBC reported on Saturday.

China and India both claim disputed territory in the latter’s northeastern region, and a tense border standoff in 2013 led to the creation of a massive 90,000 Indian troop deployment along the Himalayan border to counter China's military presence. That plan was scaled down this week when Indian Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar ordered that the deployment be reduced to 25,000-30,000, citing the prohibitive costs of maintaining such a huge force.

A 2014 incident where 200 Chinese soldiers entered territory that India claims as its own came just before a scheduled visit from Xi, underscoring the issue’s effect on relations between the two nations. During that visit, China announced $20 billion worth of investment in India over five years, which included two new industrial parks.

China is India’s top trading partner, but the relation between the two powers has sufferred, with India running a record $37.8 billion trade deficit with China in 2014.