China yesterday called on India to meet it halfway in a dispute over journalists working in each other's countries after China said its reporters in India had been treated unfairly and an Indian journalist was asked to leave China.

The dispute over media staff is the latest episode to highlight tension between the Asian neighbours since a deterioration in ties in mid-2020 when their troops clashed on their disputed Himalayan frontier and 24 people were killed.

"In recent years, Chinese journalists in India have been accorded unfair and discriminatory arrangements," Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin told a briefing yesterday.

"We hope that India will continue to issue visas for Chinese journalists and remove the unreasonable restrictions and create favourable conditions for media exchanges."

China has declined to renew the visas of the last two Indian journalists based there, citing India taking similar action this month against the two remaining Chinese state media journalists in India.

One of the two Indians, a reporter for the Hindustan Times, left China on Sunday as his visa expired, according to two sources.

The last Indian reporter in China, from the state news agency PTI, will leave this month when his visa expires, the sources said.