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BEIJING, April 29-- Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi held an informal meeting Friday and Saturday in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, underscoring mutual trust and cooperation. The Xi-Modi meeting has become a new milestone in the development of China-India bilateral relations, said Russian expert Boris Volkhonsky, associate professor of the Institute of Asian and African Studies, Moscow State University. "The meeting is of great symbolic significance ... It will undoubtedly give impetus and new dynamics to China-India relations," Volkhonsky told Xinhua. Volkhonsky said addressing global development issues without the participation of China and India is simply impossible. Building trust between the two largest countries in the region would contribute to global peace and stability, he added. The historic "informal" summit between Xi and Modi would lead to consensus on many long-pending issues between India and China, and it would usher in a new world order of "equals," said Prof. Manoranjan Mohanty, former chairperson of India's premier Institute of Chinese Studies. This was a milestone like former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's visit in 1988, Mohanty told Xinhua. Being billed as an informal summit which did not focus on specific issues, the meeting could be an occasion for a frank exchange of views, said Mohanty, who is the incumbent chairperson of the Bhubaneswar-based Development Research Institute. | 
