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