Singh in Beijing to boost relations

INDIAN prime minister Manmohan Singh arrived in Beijing yesterday for a three-day visit aimed at boosting sometimes strained relations between the Asian giants whose massive populations and sizzling economies are increasingly driving world trade.

Mr Singh was scheduled to meet with top Chinese leaders including President Hu Jintao, Premier Wen Jiabao and the Communist Party’s No 2 ranking official, Wu Bangguo, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. His visit, the first by an Indian prime minister in nearly five years, comes as the two nations enjoy a surge in trade to $37 billion (€25bn) in 2007, almost touching the 2010 target of $40bn (€27bn) set during Mr Hu’s 2006 visit to New Delhi.

Mr Singh has also presided over an unprecedented increase in contacts between the two countries, which fought a short but bloody war in 1962, but held their first joint military exercises at the end of last year.

Mistrust remains over the decades-old clashes and the still unresolved border dispute over which they were fought. The two, whose combined population of nearly 2.4 billion accounts for a third of humanity, have been seen at times as rivals for economic and political supremacy in Asia. China has long-standing close ties with India’s rival, Pakistan, and some have interpreted Beijing’s cultivation of Burma and other Indian neighbours as presaging a low-intensity competition for influence.

Mr Singh said he would discuss “issues relating to the boundary”, expected to include both the border dispute and India’s concerns that Chinese troops have been making incursions over the de facto frontier.