India is not perturbed by reports emanating from Beijing on the supposed Indian military build-up on its border with China and maintained that New Delhi-Beijing relations are no longer guided by the border issue alone.
Senior officials here said on the eve of a bilateral meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit (EAS) in Bali, Indonesia, that relations between the two countries must be evaluated in a larger perspective.
Officials said that given the diversity and range of issues on which India and China had been engaged in the last few months, the relationship could easily be described as a very complex engagement in the world.
“A major element in the ties is the phenomenal growth witnessed in the trade. In the current year so far, the volume of trade has grown by 17 per cent,” the officials said.
They maintained that there were a number of issues on which there was convergence of views between the two countries and cited the example of common position taken on the environment at BRICS at Sanya in China.
They sought to emphasise that notwithstanding the concerns from some quarters from the Chinese side on the supposed Indian consolidation and build-up, there had not been a death on the India-China border since 1975. They said that both sides were engaged in the second stage of talks on a movement forward in resolution of border issues and were close to an agreement on a mechanism to ensure tranquillity on the border.
On trade-related issues, the officials said that there was no cause for alarm and the economic crisis particularly in the western world provided a great opportunity to both sides to strengthen ties.
