President Xi in India

President Xi Jinping will eventually pay us a visit, & it is in our interests to have our house in order when he does

President Xi Jinping of China is currently in India on a three-day visit, there to service an important strategic partnership. He is going to sign a slew of MoUs that centre around trade and investment and discuss the festering border dispute — currently spiking as about 200 Chinese apparently entered territory claimed by India intent on building a road. They left, seemingly amicably. The Modi government has a hill to climb in terms of revitalising the Indian economy that is close to being dead in the water, and needs all the help it can get. Both China and India were on a par with each other in economic terms in the 1980s, but the speed of growth in the Chinese economy has left India panting in its wake.



For the Chinese their interests in India are very similar to what they are in Pakistan — investment in infrastructure that will be of benefit to the Chinese economy and open new markets for Chinese goods, and the creation of industrial zones — or trade corridors in the case of Pakistan. India is reportedly uneasy about the way in which China is active in what it regards as its ‘back garden’ — the Maldives, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Myanmar — and no happier about the deepening Chinese relationship with ourselves. Although there was much huffing and puffing about the delayed visit of the Chinese premier to Pakistan as a result of security concerns, the reality is that the Chinese are not about to walk away from Pakistan any more than they are from India, simply because the benefits to China are potentially so great that a little cross-border irritation is not going to get in the way of doing business.

For its part, China is less than delighted with the warming-up of relations between India and the US, but as America pivots towards the Pacific — events in the Middle East notwithstanding — this has to be seen as another factor in the re-balancing of the geopolitical scales. President Xi Jinping will eventually pay us a visit, and it is in our best interests to have our house in order when he does. Pakistan will probably benefit from such a visit much more than India, as a number of infrastructural projects in Pakistan are dependent upon Chinese funding and technological collaboration.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 20^th, 2014.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.