The visit of Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, to India early next month comes amidst a growing international debate on the dramatic economic growth of the two nations and its consequences for peace and stability within the region and beyond. Realists across the world are convinced that as rising powers, neighbours and two civilisational states with larger-than-life self-perceptions, India and China are destined for rivalry and confrontation. Can Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Wen Jiabao prove the cynics wrong by demonstrating that expansive cooperation for mutual benefit is a credible option?India and China cannot convince sceptics by great sounding words on the relevance of Panchsheel, Asian solidarity and global multipolarity. Rhetoric, in any case, is never in short supply when Indian and Chinese leaders meet. In the past, lofty words have been used by New Delhi and Beijing to drug the domestic audiences into self-congratulation. But the rest of the world scoffed at their attempt to paper over deep and abiding differences on bilateral issues and the absence of a normal, good neighbourly relationship. Manmohan Singh and Wen Jiabao now have an opportunity to approach the future of bilateral relationship with a positive and pragmatic mindset. For a change, they have a growing economic relationship marked by booming trade, which reached US $14 billion last year from almost nothing in the mid-nineties. There is talk of comprehensive economic cooperation, if not a free trade area, between the two Asian giants.All this is to the good. But the boundary dispute remains the main obstacle to the political transformation of the India-China relationship. In the last two years, some progress has already been made by Special Representatives from the two governments negotiating a set of guiding principles on the resolution of the boundary dispute. One big difference is apparently holding them back. China wants major territorial concessions on Twang in Arunachal Pradesh. India is in no position to offer this to them. Manmohan Singh and Wen Jiabao must mandate their two Special Representatives to explore creative solutions to the Tawang question. Without a breakthrough on Tawang, which holds the key to the boundary settlement, the structure of a new bilateral relationship the two sides are trying to build will rest on a shaky political foundation. That breakthrough, in turn, demands a new vision in Beijing and New Delhi that transcends the territorial imperative.
