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Both sides to focus on economic cooperation
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THE “world’s factory” and the “world’s back office” could together drive global economic growth, President Xi Jinping said as he began a rare visit to India yesterday.
India’s new prime minister, Narendra Modi, is determined to build closer relations with the world’s second-largest economy, whose leader arrived on Modi’s 64th birthday armed with pledges to invest billions of dollars in railways, industrial parks and roads.
“As the two engines of the Asian economy, we need to become cooperation partners spearheading growth,” Xi wrote in a column in The Hindu newspaper before landing in India.
He said that, together, China’s strong manufacturing base and India’s software and scientific skills have massive potential both as a production base and for creating a consumer market.
Xi flew with his wife directly to Ahmedabad, the main city in Modi’s home state of Gujarat, where the Indian prime minister greeted him with a handshake and a bouquet of lilies.
During the Chinese president’s visit, a US$6.8 billion deal to set up two industrial parks for Chinese investment in India was on the cards, a senior Chinese official said in New Delhi, at a separate event where another US$3.4 billion worth of agreements was signed between Chinese and Indian firms.
Indian airline IndiGo, the country’s largest by market share, said it had sealed a US$2.6 billion agreement on the sidelines of the summit with Industrial and Commercial Bank of China to finance more than 30 new aircraft.
Further deals worth tens of billions of dollars were expected to be announced on the three-day visit, dwarfing the US$400 million invested by China in India over the past 14 years.
Xi will hold official talks with Modi and India’s President Pranab Mukherjee today, when the two sides will sign a series of agreements expected to include nuclear cooperation.
Border issues are on the agenda for Xi’s visit. But both sides say they want to focus on economic cooperation, with India seeking Chinese funding for an overhaul of its dilapidated railways and cooperation in nuclear energy.
“China-India relations have become one of the most dynamic and promising bilateral relations in the 21st century,” wrote Xi in The Hindu.
Ahead of the visit, Modi alluded to ancient Sino-Indian ties dating back to a Chinese Buddhist monk Xuan Zang, who spent time in Modi’s village in Gujarat in AD 600.
“Through the medium of Buddhism, India and China, especially China and Gujarat have developed very close relations,” Modi said, addressing Chinese media.
“India and China today constitute almost 35 percent of the world’s population. From a purely arithmetic point of view ... that they decide to work together will open big gates for progress and development in the world,” Modi said.
China is India’s largest trading partner, while India is China’s biggest in South Asia, with two-way trade totaling about US$65.5 billion last year.
The two emerging powerhouses have set a target of increasing their annual bilateral trade volume to US$100 billion by 2015, as they are seeking to step up trade and investment engagement.
India is the last stop of Xi’s four-nation tour in Central and South Asia.
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