There is also reason to believe that expanding commerce will end the massive mutual ignorance of the two societies. The real contact between the peoples of China and India has only begun. As they rediscover each other, there will be a lot more things the two nations will be doing together. But the big proposition that China and India could become political rivals in Asia and beyond, remains a nagging one. After all, the romance in Sino-Indian relations in the 1950s quickly turned into hostility that endured for many decades.

Even as China and India celebrate their new levels of mutual interdependence, there is no guarantee they will be able to avoid future conflict. Forget their intractable boundary dispute for a moment. As they rise, China and India are already locked in new modes of political contestation.

Even at the modest levels of per capita income they now enjoy, China and India bump into each other in different parts of the world,whether it is in search of energy and mineral resources or political and military influence. India worries about China’s growing profile in South Asia and Beijing in turn wonders what India is up to in East Asia.

We must hope with Khanna that the billions of the world’s new entrepreneurs — organised under two very ambitious nation-states with an unshakeable faith in their own destinies — will choose cooperation rather than rivalry. We cannot, however, be complacent. The challenge is to get Beijing and New Delhi to see the potential risk of a confrontation and take conscious steps to minimise it.