Beijing and New Delhi: in search of a difficult alliance
New Delhi (AsiaNews/Agencies) - Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh arrives in China tomorrow for a three-day visit. Singh will meet with Chinese prime minister Wen Jibao and president Hu Jintao, and official sources have already announced that at least five agreements will be signed, including one on cooperation between the state rail companies of the two countries. But everyone is asking how relations will unfold in the medium term between the two largest countries in the world, whose economies are growing rapidly.
In recent days, India's Information and Broadcasting Minister Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi has announced that there will also be agreements on housing, land management, traditional medicine, and geological studies. Relations between the two countries resumed a few years ago, following the still unresolved border war of 1962: New Delhi accuses China of occupying 38,000 square kilometres of its territory, while Beijing lays claim to the entire Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which extends over 90,000 square kilometres and has over a million inhabitants. India also complains that Beijing provides little transparency in military matters, and China views with suspicion the naval training exercises conducted in the Indian Ocean in November by India, the United States, Japan, and Australia. China is one of Pakistan's close military allies, and a tradition rival of India, while New Delhi is harbouring Tibetan refugees, seen by Beijing as terrorists and secessionist traitors.
In recent days, Singh has repeated that "China is our largest neighbour and [in] many ways engagement with China is an imperative necessity". The two nations account for a third of the world's population.
Although Pranab Mukherjee, India's foreign minister, has stated that no great new developments should be expected from the visit, trade between the two countries has grown from 1.8 billion dollars in 1999 to the 20 billion dollars forecast for this year, and China is now India's leading trade partner. India also complains that China gobbles up raw materials, especially iron, and that the country's manufacturing exports could hamper the growth of India's domestic industry. In 2007, New Delhi had a trade deficit of over 9 billion dollars with Beijing, and official agencies have warned that "[this] deficit is tolerable only for a finite period", raising the prospect of protectionist policies and the risk of a trade war. Moreover, Singh needs concrete results and cannot neglect his political standing in India, after the coalition government suffered various electoral defeats in 2007, a problem that communist China does not have to face.
Ma Jiali, a professor at the Academy of China Contemporary International Relations, says that "India no longer sees us as an enemy. They may see us as a rival or a competitor, but at least not a threat". Rivalry is deeply rooted among the people of the two countries: although together they number over 2.3 billion people, in 2006 only 67,000 Chinese tourists visited India, and only 400,000 Indians visited China, mostly businessmen and students. In 2006, only 200 Chinese studied at Indian universities.
All the experts agree, however, that the two countries, which share the ambition of becoming global superpowers, can only benefit from peaceful cooperation. The question everyone is asking is in what way, and how soon, this relationship will develop.
Professor Ma maintains that each of the two peoples can learn much from the other. "China is now trying to build a harmonious society. We certainly can learn something from Indians' experience, such as their diversified culture, their tolerance to different things and their views on religion". (PB)
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