NEW DELHI, Jan. 11 (Xinhua) -- Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Thursday met with visiting Chinese State Councilor Dai Bingguo, who was attending the Third Meeting of Senior Representatives of National Security Affairs of BRICS countries in the Indian capital.

Dai conveyed to the Indian prime minister cordial greetings and good wishes from Chinese President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao, and delivered a letter from Communist Party of China General Secretary Xi Jinping to Prime MInister Singh.

Xi said in the letter that China-India relations have maintained stable development in the past few years, which has brought about substantial benefits to the two countries and the two peoples.

Xi said that the world has enough space for China and India to achieve common development, and the world also needs common development. He said that China will, as it has been doing, pay great importance to developing relations with India and expects to carry out close cooperation with India to create a brighter future of their bilateral relations.

Dai Bingguo said during his meeting with Prime Minister Singh that in the past 10 years, China and India have seen great development in their bilateral relations. The two countries have efficiently controlled their disputes and differences and have pushed forward development of bilateral relations, while gradually

finding a pragmatic way of maintaining friendly relationship of co- existence between them. He said that in the next five to 10 years, China and India will see a strategically important period of opportunities to develop their relations.

Dai expressed his hope that the two countries will highly cherish, maintain and develop the momentum of good relationship while expressing confidence that China-India relations will see greater and better development with the care and guidance of the leaders of the two countries.

Prime Minister Singh asked Dai to convey his cordial greetings to Chinese leaders and expressed his appreciation of the view of General Secretary Xi Jinping on the future development of bilateral ties.

Singh emphasized that it is a priority of the Indian government to maintain good relations with China and that India is willing to work with China to grasp the opportunity in developing bilateral ties and deepening India-China strategic cooperative partnership.