Premier Wen Jiabao is leaving Beijing today on a four-nation tour to South Asia, with his last stop being India. 

The choice of April for the premier's visit to India is symbolic of the increasing significance that China has been attaching to its relations with India. For it was also in April, 55 years ago, that China and India, the two most populous nations in the world, formally established diplomatic ties.

That was a time when China had just been through a revolution, and not long after India proclaimed independence. Premier Wen told Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in November last year that despite earlier ups and downs, the two countries were now on the best of terms. He said this when the two men were attending the 10th Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit held in Vientiane, Laos.

How can the two countries, home to two-fifths of humanity and two of the most rapidly developing economies in the world, forge even closer ties and do a greater service to world peace? Some veteran diplomats and experts in Sino-Indian relations recently shared their views with China Daily.

Nalin Surie, India's ambassador to China, said: "We have reason to be satisfied with the current state of bilateral ties. Presently our two countries are in the process of rediscovering each other, for there has been greater realization that it is in our mutual interest to not only build trust and understanding but to extensively learn from each other's developmental experiences and to reinvigorate efforts to resolve the differences."

Pei Yuanying, former Chinese ambassador to India, said Premier Wen's four-day visit to India, starting on April 9, "is the continuation of the frequent high-level exchanges between the two neighbors following a gradual thaw in bilateral ties in recent years."

Pei said under the current international situation, this visit -- to which both countries have attached great importance -- will promote a long-term and constructive partnership between the two Asian giants by adopting a more mature and pragmatic approach.

During the visit, leaders from both sides are expected to discuss issues ranging from economic cooperation to the outline of principles to resolve their border disputes. Also on the table will be collaboration in combating global terrorism, the need for multilateralism and other important regional and international issues.

"A number of important agreements are expected to be signed during the visit, including those that will have a positive impact on and facilitate the development of our economic cooperation," said Surie.

"Premier Wen's visit will be a major landmark in upgrading our bilateral relations as part of the process that we are already embarked upon and enable us to further broaden the on-going process of development and diversification of our relations."

Through in-depth talks on bilateral ties and major international and regional issues of common concern, the visit will undoubtedly further mutual understanding and trust between the two countries and inject new vigor into bilateral ties.

Sino-Indian relations have seen ups and downs over the past decades. Liu Jian, a South Asia researcher with the Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said: "The border clash in 1962 was unfortunate in that it left a legacy of mutual distrust. Bilateral relations thus remained stagnant until the then Indian Foreign Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee visited China in 1979."

High-level exchanges have since resumed, with the then Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi visiting Beijing in 1988.

Though Sino-Indian relations turned sour briefly due to New Delhi's nuclear tests in May 1998, mutual understanding was enhanced and a mechanism for dialogue on security was set up in 1999.

In 2002, China's then Premier Zhu Rongji paid an official visit to India, where he said that the two countries should shoulder key responsibilities to maintain peace and stability in Asia.

Thanks to efforts made by both sides over the past several years, great strides have been made in improving bilateral relations and the frosty period is being seen as merely a fleeting phase from a historic perspective.

Rapport was quickened in the recent past, especially when the then Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee paid a historic visit to Beijing in June 2003, the first tour of China by an Indian prime minister in a decade. During his visit, the two nations signed the Declaration on Principles for Relations and Comprehensive Cooperation, a legal document guiding the development of bilateral ties in the new century. This laid a solid foundation for furthering mutual cooperation on all fronts.

In particular, a testament to the political vision and courage of the two leaders, the declaration clearly spelt out the manner in which border issues were to be resolved between the two countries.

Both sides vowed to seek a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable solution for the issue through consultations on an equal footing. They also asserted in the declaration that the development of neither country should be viewed as a threat to the other.

Sun Shihai, deputy director with the Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that warming relations were not, as some feared, derailed by the government change in India last year. In fact high-level exchanges are now frequent and dialogue on border issues is taking place.

The current border dispute should not stand in the way of expanding trade and developing friendly and cooperative relations between the neighbors.

According to Pei, bilateral trade and investment are booming, with total volume already exceeding US$13.6 billion last year. The two nations are also considering cooperating in the energy field, with discussions on the concept of setting up a free trade area between them.

Meanwhile, bilateral military exchanges have been restored gradually. A series of high-level exchanges took place last year following Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes' visit to China in 2003. The high number of exchanges is expected to inject vitality into once-stalled military relations.

Cooperation in other fields, such as culture, tourism and sports, is also expanding.

The two nations remain different in many ways, but never before have they been so closely bound together. The sustained growth and diversification of Sino-Indian relations in recent years mirrors a shared political will to walk out of the shadows of the past and move to embrace the future.

The overall development of Sino-Indian rapport has its own concrete foundation.

As neighbors who have each adopted an independent foreign policy and first put forward and advocated the Five Principles of Peaceful Co-existence, both countries have similar views on major regional and international issues.

They share an aspiration to contribute to a stable and prosperous Asia. They also shoulder a common responsibility to push forward the process of building a multi-polar world and democratizing international relations.

A peaceful international environment and amiable surroundings are crucial for both countries. The convergence of their strategic objectives and interests has served as a catalyst for bringing the two Asian nations closer.

Competition between the two is inevitable. But there is more than ample space in the world economy for the two fast-growing economies, since the process of development in each country has led to increasing similarities between China and India, and both could benefit enormously by making the best use of each other's rise as a source of growth for their own development.

(China Daily April 5, 2005)