Premier Wen Jiabao confident of China-India ties

The Sino-Indian relations are "at prime time now", said Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in a recent interview with Press Trust of India.

He will begin his visit to India on Saturday, whose trip coincides with the 55th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between the two countries.

"There is no fundamental conflicts between China and India and both sides need to learn from each other," Wen told the Indian media in Beijing.

China and India, the world's two most populous nations and fast growing economies, have improved their relations dramatically in recent years.

Bilateral trade soared to 13.6 billion US dollars in 2004, 13 times the volume of ten years ago. India is China's largest trade partner in South Asia while China has become India's second largest export market and third import market.

"The economic and trade relations have developed rapidly with cooperation fields widened and contents deepened," said Wen. "There exist great potentials for such relationship," Wen added.

The Sino-Indian relations are following the track of sustained, healthy and mature development and have entered a new stage of all-round cooperation, said Wen.

Both nations, viewing each other as important cooperative partner, continue to enhance political trust and pledge to uphold the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence and fairly and reasonably settle the "issue left over by history" through equal consultations, said Wen.

Besides, the premier said, the two countries have made new progress in cooperation in trade, culture, technology, education, tourism and international affairs and are all confident of their future relations.

"The prosperity of China and India represents not only the rise of the whole Asia, but also the progress of the developing countries," Wen said, describing the two countries as sincere friends instead of rivals.

"The common development and friendship between China and India are in the interests of the two peoples," the premier said.

Premier Wen's India visit will come up with a series of important agreements in various fields.

"Global strategic partnership"

"The friendly strategic partnership between China and India is still in the initial stage. The nature of Sino-India relations is not antagonistic, and China and India must be friends in the new global strategic arena in the near future," noted Zhang Wenmu, expert on the studies on international strategy and professor with the Institute of International Strategy under Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Vice minister of Foreign Affairs Wu Dawei also commented recently that China is developing relations with India, a south Asia giant. Premier Wen's visit to India could be also interpreted as the further deepening of friendly Sino-India relations since former Chinese President Jiang Zeming and NPC chairman Li Peng visited the country respectively.

Zhang pointed out that the rapid development of domestic economy is the internal force that backs India to pursue big-country policy and powerful diplomacy. The ease of diplomatic relations with China demonstrated the directional transfer of safety strategy in India. However, in the long run, the top interest of India does not lie in its northern continent, but its southern territorial waters.

According to Zhang's analysis, India enjoys the advantage of being the centres of world's geopolitics and resources. Situated between Persian Gulf and the Strait of Malacca. Since the surrounding areas of Indian Ocean are rich in oil and mineral resources, the India Ocean is doubtless the focus of interests by world's super powers.

In light of the prevailing American influence in the regions of Middle East and Central Asia, India has become aware of the safety pressure in the Indian Ocean region. By drawing lesson from the fact that countries were destroyed while seizing oceanic resources with others, India realized that the development of unclear power is the only way to effectively control navies in Indian Ocean region. However, India's move will inevitably threaten the strategic interests of the US in that region, which always regards the sea power as of life-and-death importance.

Zhang further noted that Indian government is clear the geopolitical interests of China in the Indian Ocean is not as urgent as that of the US, and there will not be frontal confrontation between China and India in the Indian Ocean in the near future. Since India and Pakistan have been publicly acknowledged as the countries that possess unclear facilities, there is little possibility for the warfare between China and India, India and Pakistan to break out. The geopolitical reasons, namely the diversion of India's investment to its south regions and the rapid improvement of Sino-India and Indo-Pakistan diplomatic relations, may be accounted for the change.

By People's Daily Online