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Two Giants Try to Learn to Share Asia

By JIM YARDLEY and SOMINI SENGUPTA
January 13, 2008


Harish Tyagi/European Pressphoto Agency
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India played host to the premier of Greece last week before leaving himself for China.

BEIJING — Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India will arrive in Beijing on Sunday for a three-day visit to China, with each country eager to increase bilateral trade, promote mutual friendship and offer reassurances that Asia is big enough to accommodate the ambitions of both rising powers.

Mr. Singh is visiting China for the first time as prime minister, when his government also has drawn closer to Japan and the United States. But Indian officials insist that India is not a proxy for American interests and is not plotting to form alliances to counter China’s rise. India also wants Chinese cooperation on nuclear issues and managing the unrest in Pakistan.

“I have made it clear to the Chinese leadership that India is not part of any so-called contain China effort,” Mr. Singh said last week, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.

China sees the trip as the latest proof of its maturing relationship with India after decades of hostility and mistrust rooted in a brief border war in 1962. Neither side is expecting significant progress on lingering disputes, especially over their contested Himalayan border. But Chinese leaders consider warmer relations critical for avoiding the kind of regional instability that could threaten economic growth.

“The most important thing for the two countries is to create a favorable environment, a peaceful environment for development in the long term,” said Sun Shihai, a South Asia specialist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. “So both sides are trying to make their policies more pragmatic toward each other.”

China and India are the world’s fastest-growing major economies, though China is easily the more dominant. Its annual trade with India remains only fraction of its trade with Europe, Japan and the United States. But China-India trade is growing rapidly. When President Hu Jintao of China visited India in 2006, the countries pledged to double trade to $40 billion by 2010 — a goal they nearly reached last year and are likely to surpass this year.

Both sides are expected to continue the trade push this week. Mr. Singh is bringing a large business delegation and is keen to correct a trade imbalance tipping in China’s favor.

Mr. Singh will spend his entire trip in Beijing and is scheduled to address China’s leading government research institute. He will be honored at a private dinner given by Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and will meet with Mr. Hu.

“China attaches great importance to Prime Minister Singh’s visit and hopes to deepen the traditional friendship between the two countries,” said Jiang Yu, a spokeswoman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

In New Delhi, senior Indian officials lowered expectations for any breakthroughs. They said the agenda was loaded with items based on old grievances and new challenges.

The border dispute includes competing land claims over the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. But a senior Indian official said Mr. Singh expected little progress because China is never inclined to use high-level visits to negotiate details. Officials in New Delhi offered a measured response to reports that China was rapidly building infrastructure near the disputed border.

“As of now, we are comfortable with our relations with China,” Shiv Shankar Menon, the Indian foreign secretary, said Friday. “We are both successful in maintaining peace and tranquillity along the border.”

Water is a growing bilateral concern, and the countries have established a joint committee to study the flow of rivers that originate in Tibet and flow into the Indian hills and plains. On issues of energy security, terrorism and climate change, the Indians see a confluence of interests, if not identical objectives.

Pakistan, India’s old rival and China’s equally old ally, is also on the agenda because both sides are concerned about political turmoil across that country.

“Both of us want this entire area to be peaceful and stable so we can get on with our lives, whether it’s China’s periphery or our periphery,” a senior Indian official who was not authorized to speak on matters of strategic delicacy said last week,

One of India’s biggest concerns is whether China will, even reluctantly, support India’s bid to buy nuclear technology. The Bush administration has opened that door, but the request is subject to approval by the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Nuclear Suppliers Group. The Indian official said he did not expect China to actively block India’s ambitions. “I’m not saying they’re happy with it, not at all,” the official said. “They won’t be the ones to stand up.”

Meanwhile, China is expected to push India to further open itself to Chinese investment and business interests. China’s telecommunications giant, Huawei, has hit snags in India, while China has complained about Indian laws devised to protect domestic industries from competition.

Economic competition is inevitable as India is rapidly expanding its manufacturing base — China’s strength — while China is trying to move its economy toward the service and high-tech industries at the center of India’s economic expansion. China’s rising military capacity has alarmed Washington, which entered into a strategic dialogue with Japan and Australia in 2002. Proposals that India join that group of Pacific Rim democracies instantly attracted concern in Beijing.

Last week, Mr. Singh told reporters in New Delhi that those proposals “never got going.” Last year, India and China had joint military exercises for the first time. Michael J. Green, former director of Asian affairs at the National Security Council, said the United States was not discouraging warmer relations between India and China, but noted that tensions remained. He said China was quietly trying to oppose the United States-India nuclear deal and objected to including India on the United Nations Security Council. “Beneath the surface, the Indians are very strategically wary of China,” said Mr. Green, who teaches at Georgetown University.

China and India are increasingly playing roles in what have been each other’s backyards. New Delhi has been courting Southeast Asian countries like Vietnam and Singapore, just as China’s role is growing in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Han Hua, an associate professor of international studies at Peking University in Beijing, said those underlying tensions were why China and India wanted to establish a broader spirit of cooperation to carry the relationship beyond specific grievances. She said the countries want to defy an old Chinese proverb, which holds that two tigers cannot share the same mountain.

“The two countries want to show the world that they can get along,” she said.

Jim Yardley reported from Beijing, and Somini Sengupta from New Delhi.

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