On the face of it, President Xi Jinping’s India visit should have been pegged a runaway success — hours of one-on-one exchanges with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, both in Ahmedabad and Delhi, a trade agreement for the next five years, two Chinese-style industrial cities to be built and the promise of multiplying Chinese investment in India 40-fold.
Not just that, President Xi’s gesture of offering to open a new route to Kailash Mansarovar after Prime Minister Modi’s request, to benefit aged and infirm pilgrims, should have indicated a new reachout between the two countries.
However, according to experts here, the visit was overshadowed by the border stand-off that escalated even as the two leaders were walking by the Sabarmati riverside in Ahmedabad and sitting down for dinner on Wednesday night.
“I think it spun out of control,” said Mohan Guruswamy of the Centre for Policy Alternatives.
