The happy exception to this unreal discourse comes from the Indian businessmen — small and big — who are traveling to China in droves and making things happen. They have expanded India’s bilateral trade with China to a stunning $38 billion last year from barely $300 million ten years ago. Taking cue from the emerging depth of the bilateral relationship, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who arrives in Beijing over the weekend, must break from the old tradition of furtive political engagement with China. Transparency must prevail over the constant temptation to posture for domestic audiences. The PM has no reason to be defensive about the fact that the boundary negotiations with China have stalled. Instead of trying to cook up ‘progress’, the government must acknowledge the problems in finding mutually acceptable territorial concessions. Nor is it necessary for the PM to apologise for India’s warming ties with the US.

After all, Beijing never found it necessary to ‘explain’ its all-weather friendship with Islamabad nor its occasional strategic partnership with Washington.

If he brushes aside India’s diplomatic obsession with drafting lofty joint declarations, Manmohan Singh could begin an important political conversation with his principal Chinese interlocutor — President Hu Jintao. As their economies grow rapidly and their national interests turn global, India and China will increasingly bump against each other in far corners. Sometimes, they might be on the same side; at others they will be competitors. Manmohan Singh and Hu must find ways to reduce the prospect for rivalry and expand the areas of cooperation. They might want to label this effort as the search for a ‘strategic partnership’. Words, however, are less important than the urgent adaptation to the new global dynamic of Sino-Indian relations.