Coming on the back of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Beijing in January, and the testy exchanges over Arunachal Pradesh, Tibet and the Dalai Lama in recent weeks, Indian diplomats were at pains to stress the gains of showcasing the real India.

Tourism, the other big T after trade, is fast becoming another bridge between India and China, said Indian ambassador Nirupama Rao to an audience that included Chinese girls in silk cholis and skirts, salwar suits and sarees.

As part of the campaign to strengthen this “bridge”, New Delhi is also hosting a similar cultural evening in Shanghai, China’s commercial hub, this week, organising week-long food festivals in the two cities and flooding local media with advertisements.

Spurred by double-digit GDP growth, rising urban incomes and a desire to see the world, more and more Chinese are visiting foreign lands and for now, Europe and South-East Asian countries are clear favourites, Chinese travel industry officials said.

Although the number of Chinese tourists visiting India jumped 48 percent last year, in real terms it was a paltry 68,000. While about 4.62 lakh Indian tourists visited China in 2007, officials said all of them may not purely have been for leisure. Short business trips, visa renewal visits and Hong Kong-based Indians crossing over are also included in this, they said.

Nevertheless, India needs to ease visa procedures, develop special tourism circuits for the Chinese and most importantly, augment the availability of affordable hotels to compete with the likes of Singapore, Thailand and South Korea, they said.

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