Posted: Submitted by Wocca (748) on Tue, 2005-10-25 05:56. | Subject: Strategic Talks - China / India

The first-ever strategic talks between India & China took place in New Delhi, India in January 2005 This was the outcome of years of efforts by these two largest Asian nations

"to take bilateral engagements into a long-term and strategic relationship."

India's Commerce and Industry Minister later told the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland that the complementarities between the two nations' economies are in the process of being harnessed, and when that happens, it would result in achieving rapid expansion of bilateral trade and economic ties.

"The India-China two-way trade is now US$1 billion a month, compared to US$1 billion a year a decade ago. This twelve-fold increase in the last decade only goes to prove that though we are competitors in many respects, we are also complementary and supplementary to each other," an official statement said, quoting Kamal Nath.

He also pointed out that if one takes ASEAN, China, Japan, Korea, and India together, the size of such an integrated market is that of the European Union in terms of income, and bigger than the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in terms of trade.

Despite the remarkable improvements in bilateral relations, serious obstacles remain. This includes the unresolved boundary issue,which involves more than 125,000 square kilometers in disputed territories.

Executive Inteligence Review