 "Direct China-India flight to resume from Nov 9, three times a week")
Commercial air travel between Delhi and Shanghai is set to resume after a five-year hiatus, with China Eastern Airlines announcing the restart of its direct flights on this route.
The move, effective November 9, is seen as a significant diplomatic thaw between the two Asian giants following a prolonged freeze in direct air links triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic and deadly border clashes.
The state-backed carrier’s website confirmed flights will operate three times a week—on Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays—marking the end of a suspension that began in 2020.
India’s Foreign Ministry had previously indicated that commercial flights would resume, a development that follows Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s meeting at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit earlier this month.
While the resumption of flights is officially intended to improve trade ties—Prime Minister Modi used his visit to China to raise concerns about India’s growing bilateral trade deficit—the timing suggests a broader geopolitical alignment.
The diplomatic warming comes amid increasingly aggressive trade policies by US President Donald Trump. The report notes that Trump recently raised tariffs on Indian imports and urged the European Union to impose steep 100 percent tariffs on both China and India, ostensibly to pressure Moscow over the war in Ukraine. These external pressures appear to be prompting the two Asian neighbours to normalize their relationship and draw closer together.
Before the freeze, the countries experienced their worst military violence in decades along the Himalayan border in 2020, resulting in the deaths of 20 Indian soldiers and four Chinese soldiers. India’s largest carrier, IndiGo, previously announced plans to start nonstop flights between Kolkata and Guangzhou as part of the normalisation effort.
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