Sino-Indian ties to improve under Hu Jintao

Sino-Indian strategic relations are expected to get further fillip during the second innings of Chinese Communist Party chief Hu Jintao, who is all set to offer a red carpet welcome to Congress president Sonia Gandhi in Beijing this week.

Chinese President Hu, who had proposed to turn the disputed Sino-India boundary into a "bond of good neighbourliness and mutually beneficial cooperation", was on Monday re-elected general secretary of the ruling Communist Party of China for a second successive five-year term.

"We will pursue an independent foreign policy of peace and unswervingly follow the path of peaceful development and win-win strategy of opening-up. We will develop friendship and cooperation on the basis of the five principles of peaceful co-existence and push for the building of a harmonious world of lasting peace and common prosperity," Hu told the media immediately after his re-election.

Hu, who has met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh several times, including during his maiden state visit to New Delhi last November, is said to have established a personal rapport with the reform-minded Indian leader, who is expected to visit Beijing this year.

Hu will be hosting United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia Gandhi in Beijing on October 25 and discuss bilateral ties, CPC-Congress exchanges and regional and international issues of common interest.

Sonia is expected to be the first head of a foreign political party to meet with Hu and the new-elected Chinese leadership, signalling the high importance Beijing has placed on Sino-Indian relations, which was upgraded to strategic level in 2005 during Prime Minister Wen Jiabao's maiden visit to India.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao was also re-elected to the politburo standing committee of the 17th CPC central committee, indicating that the Chinese government will continue to pursue the good-neighbourly policy.

External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee is also scheduled to visit China on October 24 for the third standalone trilateral meeting with his Chinese and Russian counterparts in the northeast Chinese city of Harbin.

Mukherjee is scheduled to have a bilateral meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi in Harbin, discussing the entire gamut of Sino-Indian relations, including the visit of Dr Singh.

It is also hoped that India and China will make progress in resolving the vexed boundary issue during the second term of Hu, who was once the party secretary in Tibet.

"We hope to turn the China-India boundary into a bond of good-neighbourliness and mutually beneficial cooperation," Hu had said during his maiden state visit to India in November 2006.

Hu's visit to India in 2006 was his second, the last being in 1984 as president of the All-China Youth Federation, his powerbase.

Chinese sources also noted that when congratulating the new Indian President Pratibha Patil in July, Hu had offered to work with her to open a "new chapter" in Sino-Indian bilateral ties by cementing their strategic cooperative partnership.

"Both sides should expand the bilateral exchanges and cooperation, so as to benefit the people of the two countries as well as promoting peace and development in Asia and the world at large," Hu said in his message to his Indian counterpart.

"I am willing to work hard together with you on enhancing the Sino-Indian strategic cooperative partnership, and to open this new chapter of friendship of good- neighbourliness and all-round cooperation between two countries in the new century," Hu said.

Meanwhile, veteran Chinese diplomats and scholars have said that since the 16th national Congress of the CPC held in 2002, India has made important all-round progress and consolidated its national strength, compelling the Chinese leadership to take note of a "resurgent India."

The simultaneous rise of China and India has no parallel in human history and further developing the Sino-Indian relations and improving mutual trust is of utmost importance to regional peace, security and development, they said.