Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao is expected to bring up the sensitive issues of Tibet and a lingering border dispute during a four-day visit to India starting Saturday aimed at boosting political and economic ties.
India and China share a mountainous, 1,030-kilometer (650-mile) border, parts of which are not demarcated. The two sides went to war over the border row in 1962, but hope to reach a consensus on how to settle the issue while Wen is in India, China’s Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei told reporters in Beijing last week.
But even if the dispute is not resolved straight away, “it does not keep us from engaging in cooperation in other fields,” Wu said.
Despite more than four decades of frosty relations, India also is pragmatic about ties _ and rivalry _ with its larger neighbor.
“There are many who look at India-China relations with the old mind-set of balance of power or conflict of interests and see East Asia as a theater of competition between these two countries,” India’s External Affairs Minister K. Natwar Singh said.
“While there are differences between us, there is also an increasingly greater realization that there is enough space and opportunity in the region for both India and China to prosper,” he said.
Wen arrives in India from Sri Lanka on Saturday. His first stop will be the southern Indian technology hub of Bangalore. Talks with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh are scheduled for April 11 in New Delhi.
The two countries are readying nearly 30 agreements to promote political, economic and cultural ties to be signed during Wen’s visit. China Eastern Airlines is also expected to announce a new direct route linking Bombay and Shanghai.
India is also keen that the two countries coordinate in bids for international economic contracts. Last month, New Delhi urged Beijing to collaborate with it on oil and gas projects around the world as the two countries seek to strike more oil deals to meet their burgeoning energy needs.
The potential for the two rapidly growing Asian economies is reflected in their bilateral trade which grew by 79 percent in 2004 over the previous year. India-China trade reached US$13.6 billion last year, with India enjoying a comfortable trade surplus of US$1.75 billion, Indian Commerce Ministry statistics show.
Chinese officials have said Wen is likely to bring up the issue of Tibet and the role of the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, who lives in exile in India.
India allowed the Dalai Lama and his supporters to set up a government in exile in the northern Himalayan resort of Dharmsala after he fled Tibet in 1959 following an aborted uprising against Chinese rule in the territory. China accuses the Dalai Lama of trying to split China by seeking independence for Tibet.
However, the Dalai Lama has in recent days reassured the Chinese that he is agreeable to Tibet remaining within China but with greater freedom for the Tibetan people.
