PM Manmohan Singh is expected to get together his Chinese equivalent Wen Jiabao on Saturday, hopeful to extinguish a mounting verbal battle among the Asian giants centered about their decades-old border quarrel.
The conference on the sidelines of a regional summit in Thailand would be the initial high-level contact between the two nations following recent months of political barbs led to extraordinary levels of tension and uncertainties that the opposition might spin out of control.
Relations have warmed in recent years, generally on the back of reciprocal trade anticipated to pass $60 billion next year, a 30-fold increase since the year 2000.
But tensions have risen in the previous few months accompanied by reports in Indian media of Chinese border incursions, and an opposition by Beijing to Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama’s planned visit next month to Arunachal Pradesh that China claims as its individual territory.
“The visit of the Dalai Lama is seen as not only reinforcing India’s claim on Arunachal Pradesh, but also boosting the Tibetan struggle by undermining Chinese territorial integrity,” said Bhaskar Roy, a New Delhi-based strategic analyst on China.
And Beijing would like to make sure that this latest age group of Tibetan exiles based in northern India is not used as a bargaining fragment by New Delhi in future, analysts say.
“All of this is reflected in its reaction to its failure to assimilate Tibet,” said strategic analyst Prem Shankar Jha.
Joint distrust lingers from a short war the two sides fought in 1962 and the existence of the Dalai Lama in India bothers Beijing, as does India’s increasing dealings with the United States.
“This meeting would be about building confidence that has taken a knock in recent months — weeding out misapprehensions, clearing of the air,” Roy said.
The two sides have too struggled to resolve their border disagreement. Every side claims vast swathes of the other’s province all along their 3,500-km (2,173-mile) Himalayan border.
China puts down claim to 90,000 sq km of land on the eastern division of the border in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. India says China inhabits 38,000 square km (15,000 square miles) of region in Aksai Chin plateau.
Although a fresh war is very improbable, the troubled border between the world’s two most heavily populated countries has the prospective to stimulate tensions destabilizing additional a region already roiled.
“I wish to point out that at present Chinese-Indian relations have maintained a healthy direction of development,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said on Tuesday.
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