In a measure of the utmost importance that he wants to accord to his forthcoming China tour, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is burning the midnight oil and preparing hard for his three-day visit to Beijing.
Singh has put his entire focus on his firstever official visit to China, cancelling all regular appointments to accommodate meetings with experts and officials dealing on Sino-Indian issues. While the objective obviously is not to have any loose ends that could signal an absence of adequate homework, sources in the government contend that the Prime Minister is anxious that the visit does not become just an incremental one?but throw up prospects for a longlasting relationship with Beijing.
The visit may not forge breakthroughs on outstanding issues afflicting bilateral issues for over five decades now but the sources said the PM would hold talks to create conditions that will tie both countries in politico-legal framework of stability.
Indicating the focus on growth opportunities, Singh will be accompanied by a 40-member high powered business delegation including Bharti CEO Sunil Mittal, Pawan Kant Munjal of Hero Hondo Motors, ZEE chairman Subhash Chandra, Jet airways chairman Naresh Goyal, RJP Nayak of Larsen and Toubro and RS Pawar of NIIT. Bilateral trade with China is growing at a scorching pace and the two sides see it touching $37 billion this year. Last year at $34 billion, it achieved a ten-fold jump in five years. Singh and his team will be angling for Chinese investment in infrastructure sector including roads, power and manufacturing.
The visit, sources asserted, becomes all the more important in the light of the red carpet that Beijing had rolled out for Congress president Sonia Gandhi when she went there two months ago. Diplomatic sources contend that the PM will want to send clear signals that his weightage to Beijing will be as much, if not more, as that given to Washington.
China has already signalled that it will be giving top billing to Singh?s visit. On Thursday Beijing said its ties with India were witnessing ?a sound momentum? and expressed the hope that PM?s upcoming visit would further enhance the strategic partnership of cooperation between the two countries.
The PM and his 200 strong entourage will reach Beijing on Sunday. He is scheduled to begin with a business interaction organised by the China Council for Promotion of International Trade. He will be meeting Chinese president Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao on Monday.
A number of agreements to be signed have already been lined up which include signing of five memoranda of understanding (MoUs) in rail, housing, geo-sciences, land resource management and traditional medicine sectors. The MoU covering the rail sector will promote cooperation between Chinese Railways and Indian Railways. The MoU on housing will provide a basic framework for cooperation for the two countries. The two countries will set up an institutional mechanism for cooperation in the field of geo-sciences by signing an MoU to the effect. India and China also propose to jointly plan and promote their respective traditional systems of medicine.