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.

Lack of knowledge in India has never come in the way of strongly held opinion, both positive and negative, on China. New Delhi’s policy towards Beijing has always been torn between romanticism (recall the old slogans, ‘Hindi Chini bhai bhai’) and a fear and loathing of China deeply etched on the Indian mind, thanks to the mythology surrounding a brief military clash in 1962.

China has fared no better. For decades, its leaders wrote off India as inconsequential and have been constantly surprised by New Delhi in recent years — its nuclear tests in 1998, and the big power diplomacy that followed, and India’s economic rejuvenation and its political rise on the world stage.

Chinese leaders, used to order, are constantly perplexed by the chaos of Indian politics. Often at a loss to figure out complexity of the bureaucratic politics in India, the Chinese establishment often mistakes noise in New Delhi for political signals. Yet the Chinese have not chosen to devote the kind of intellectual resources Beijing expends in Washington to deal with India. Immediately after the nuclear tests in May 1998, Chinese leaders had convinced itself that the BJP was hostile to Beijing and that a Congress government would be more inclined to good bilateral relations. Now the Chinese negotiators on the boundary dispute would give their right arm to see Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Jaswant Singh and Brajesh Mishra back at the table.

The lack of mutual awareness has been compounded by total secrecy surrounding the boundary negotiations and the narrow basis of decision-making. Barring a small cadre of China hands in the foreign office, few in the government let alone the informed public, are aware of the basics of the boundary negotiations. The same is true in China.

Ignorance of the political and media elites is often helpful. For example, if the agreement on principles to resolve the boundary dispute, announced during Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao last year, were put to the same political scrutiny as the Indo-US nuclear deal, the UPA government would have been pilloried for violating the 1962 parliamentary resolution on the boundary dispute.

Ignorance hurts too — like in the nervous public reaction to the comments by the Chinese envoy in New Delhi that Arunachal Pradesh belongs to China. The foreign office was fully aware that the envoy was merely stating a long-standing position; that is of no use in dealing with the kind of reaction it generated. The truth is that a political deal on mutual boundary concessions has been at hand for some time. But neither leadership has bothered to intervene at the right moment to clinch it. Thanks to the formalism and the lack of personal intimacy, there is no culture of personal communication at the top. If Bush has the time to pick up the phone and call the Indian PM every so often, why is it that Hu and Dr Singh can’t do the same?

Even more tragic has been the reluctance of the two political leaderships to confront the enduring political differences and a preference instead to hide behind vacuous rhetoric of ‘Panchsheel’, ‘Asian solidarity’, and a ‘multipolar world’. India talks of strategic cooperation, but denies visas to Chinese businessmen and mindlessly blocks investments it so badly needs. China talks of partnership, but opposes Indo-US nuclear deal even as it prepares to offer new nuclear reactors to Pakistan.

Dr Singh and Hu should recognise the immense potential of Sino-Indian partnership cannot be realised on the basis of traditional diplomatic formalism and political hypocrisy. The Sino-Indian relationship has become a lot bigger and much more consequential for the world, despite the truculence of the two governments. It is too important to be conducted in the old format marked by ignorance, secrecy, and dissimulation.

The two countries should recognise the immense potential of Sino-Indian partnership cannot be realised on the basis of traditional diplomatic formalism and political hypocrisy. Getting beyond their prepared talking points, the Dr Singh and Hu must confront the real problems that trouble the relationship — India’s worries on the boundary dispute, China’s relationship with Pakistan and its inability to pursue an even-handed policy on Kashmir, and Beijing’s concerns on New Delhi’s brazen economic discrimination, India’s Tibet policy, and the future of Indo-US partnership.

Instead of clutching at unreadable pieces of paper that no one takes seriously, Dr Singh and Hu must begin to address each other’s concerns and find ways to solve bilateral political problems. As two leaders who carry no baggage from the past and technocrats who understand the extraordinary relative gains that could accrue from cooperation, they are well placed to break the mould on Sino-Indian relations.