Indian officials said to be in talks to allow reporters from China to return

India has stepped up engagement with Chinese media as Beijing presses New Delhi to issue visas to its journalists ahead of a possible visit by President Xi Jinping later this year, though any breakthrough on the issue is likely to take time, according to people familiar with the matter.

The outreach includes a meeting between officials from the Indian embassy in Beijing and representatives of Chinese state-run news agency Xinhua on June 24. One person familiar with the discussions described the interaction as an initial engagement, saying any substantive progress on restoring visas for Chinese journalists would take time.

The meeting was held between Shweta Singh, minister at the Indian embassy, and Wang Jianxin, deputy director general of Xinhua’s Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Department.

In a social media post on Sunday, the embassy said the two sides had “exchanged views on issues of mutual interest”.

The Xinhua meeting is part of a broader effort by the Indian embassy to engage senior editors at leading Chinese media organisations.

India asked the last accredited Xinhua correspondent to leave in June 2023, marking the first time since diplomatic ties were normalised in the late 1980s that China had no accredited journalists stationed there.