If last year’s meetings are any guide, the India-ASEAN trade differences will be out in the open and could cloud Dr Singh’s visit to the Philippines.

Strategic railways

It’s not just on trade, even on mega transport projects, like the trans-Asian Railways,China is way ahead of India. More than three years ago, Prime Minister Vajpayee talked about a rail link between New Delhi and Hanoi in Vietnam. All India needed to do was to build a missing link of about 315 km between India’s Northeast and Myanmar. While the Indian project is languishing, China is all set to complete the rail line between Singapore and Kunming, in the South Western Yunnan province, by 2015. While laying a new rail line towards the Yunnan border, China is also funding the construction of various missing links in South East Asia.

China is also offering transit facilities to South East Asian countries to export their goods overland to Russia and Europe through its own rail network. India is sitting it out.