During the BRIC summit in Brasilia earlier this year, Dai Bingguo, state councilor, pulled NSA Shivshankar Menon aside to say China wanted to hold a separate dialogue with India on Afghanistan.
It set off a “think” within the Indian leadership about recalibrating the India-China relationship to a 2.0 status. As Menon prepares to hold discussions with the top leadership in Beijing between July 3-6 as special envoy of the PM, he will have a basket of over-the-horizon issues and some pressing bilateral matters on the table.
India-China relations emerged from some choppy waters after the Copenhagen summit threw them a lifeline. It was on the back of the “Copenhagen spirit” that India and China started out this year.
While there are serious issues that divide the two countries, including a boundary dispute, and a quietly adversarial strategic outlook, there is also a sense that these should not be allowed to overwhelm the relationship. The idea seems to be to go beyond the issue of stapled visas for kashmiris, Arunachal Pradesh and the intractable boundary dispute.
Probably the best convergences between the two sides is in the multilateral sphere -- both countries have displayed remarkably similar positions on big ticket global issues. It may be a good starting point to put a new spin on the relationship.
On a larger matrix, India’s attempt to put new energy into its China relationship also comes at a time when a proposed agreement between China and Pakistan for new nuclear reactors does not go down well in Delhi. Some plain speaking with the Chinese is clearly in order here.
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