As he launched the Chinese economic miracle in December 1978, Deng Xiaoping had some simple advice on foreign policy — “keep a cool head, maintain a low profile and never take the lead.”

The current generation of Chinese leadership, basking in the glory of nearly three decades of miraculous economic growth, is looking beyond Deng’s advice and asserting itself much like the great powers of the past.

Over the last two decades, India’s China policy was largely focused on bilateral issues — resolving the boundary dispute and normalising relations. Despite some progress on boundary management, the resolution of the underlying dispute has remained elusive. Meanwhile, bilateral cooperation — especially in trade — has blossomed, with China all set to emerge as India’s largest trading partner.

What has changed, however, is the international balance of power now marked by the rapid rise of China and the somewhat slower emergence of India. The altered international context demands a restructuring of the agenda of Sino-Indian relations.

PM’s agenda

With no room for sentimentalism in China’s hard headed world-view, India too is free to explore a pragmatic agenda of engagement, without having to dress it up in ideological rhetoric.

The good news for Manmohan Singh is that China is fully aware of India’s growing power potential on the world stage and the new strategic options it has begun to develop with the US and Japan. The bad news, however, is that China is as equally conscious of the UPA government’s internal weakness and its reluctance to take bold foreign policy decisions. The PM will have to convince his Chinese interlocutors that despite the current confusing domestic debate on foreign policy, India has the will to relentlessly pursue its national interest.

Although the boundary issue has been pushed onto the backburner during the PM’s visit to Beijing, it is necessary for Manmohan Singh to reaffirm the importance of an early resolution of the boundary dispute. He must unambiguously convey to the Chinese leaders that any expectations of further territorial concessions from India are entirely unrealistic.

It is equally important for the PM to demonstrate India’s commitment to a new relationship with China by removing many of the current obstacles in New Delhi — including ridiculous visa procedures for Chinese visitors and businessmen. India must stop seeing China as one big black box, develop a differentiated view of its internal structures, and nurture a broad range of Chinese constituencies by giving them a stake in cooperation with India.

Nuclear partnership

In Beijing, the PM will have to respond to the Chinese desire to put some meat on the bones of the proclaimed strategic partnership between the two countries. As the regional and global interests of China and India grow alongwith their economic weight, there will be many new areas cooperation as well as conflict.

It is no longer enough to say that Asia is large enough to accommodate the simultaneous rise of China and India. The whole world knows about the real and putative Sino-Indian rivalry in South and Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean, and in the search for equity oil around the world.

The prime minister’s visit is an opportunity to lay down a credible framework for expanding the areas of regional and global cooperation and minimising the potential for future tensions between the two Asian giants.

The Chinese leaders, in turn, could use the PM’s visit to dispel the widespread impression that Beijing is opposed to India’s effort to regain access to international nuclear energy cooperation.

By ending its nuclear ambiguity towards New Delhi and explicitly agreeing to bilateral civilian atomic energy cooperation, Beijing can, in one stroke, undermine the long accumulated popular Indian mistrust of China.

The writer is professor, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore iscrmohan@ntu.edu.sg