Indian envoy meets Shanghai Mayor Gong Zheng

Indian Consul General in Shanghai Pratik Mathur on Friday met with Shanghai Mayor Gong Zheng, an influential official in the Chinese political hierarchy.  “Happy to meet Shanghai Mayor Gong Zheng at the opening of the SCO Cooperation Centre for Metabolic Diseases in Shanghai this morning,” the Shanghai consulate said in a social media post. Mayor Gong Zheng “conveyed his happiness on the strengthening of bilateral relations” after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to China to attend the Tianjin SCO Summit in August, including a widely-welcomed resumption of direct air links between Shanghai and India, the Shanghai Consulate said.  “The Consul General thanked the senior Chinese officials and conveyed our best wishes for further building on progress and cooperation achieved in bilateral relations which will also be mutually beneficial in multilateral frameworks such as SCO and BRICS, where India will be hosting the Leaders’ Summit this year,” it said.