If he wants to create the basis for an enduring partnership with China, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh might have to do a bit more than breaking diplomatic protocol in receiving Chinese President Hu Jintao at Palam airport in the Capital this evening. Hu’s visit, planned as a climax to the ‘year of friendship’, has not just been emptied out of political content. The atmospherics too have soured, amidst the excessive public reaction to a mere statement of fact on the boundary dispute by the Chinese envoy to New Delhi. The sad truth is that political ties between the two Asian giants remain as fragile as ever.

The brittleness is due to an all-pervasive mutual ignorance of the two societies, a narrow basis of decision-making on important bilateral issues and a habit of hiding political differences behind high sounding declarations. Unless Dr Singh and President Hu make a conscious effort to change the very framework of bilateral engagement, Sino-Indian relations might stagnate in a rough patch for a long time to come.

On the Indian side, the ignorance will be in full this display this week. Given its unfamiliarity and lack of curiosity for Chinese names, the Indian media will call the Chinese president ‘Mr Jintao’ rather than ‘Mr Hu’. The ignorance of China goes a lot deeper than that. Walk into any one of the seminars in the Capital this week on Sino-Indian relations, and you can bet that not more than a handful will be able to tell you the names of three Chinese leaders — the prime minister, foreign minister and the defence minister.

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