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 | Daily News Brief September 17, 2014 |
Top of the Agenda
China's Xi Jinping Kicks Off India Visit
Chinese President Xi Jinping began his first official trip to India on Wednesday (BBC),
marking the first by a Chinese head of state in eight years. Xi's
three-day visit, which follows a short trip to Sri Lanka, falls on
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's sixty-fourth birthday and is
expected to seal $100 billion of Chinese investment (TOI)
over five years in various sectors, including infrastructure. Despite
the bid to build closer relations, tensions hover over the talks,
including a recent Himalayan border incursion, an Indian-Vietnamese pact
to explore resources (Reuters) in the South China Sea, and disagreements over visa policies (ET).
Analysis
"The reason the leaders of the two countries sound so eager to promote close ties appears mostly to be that third parties are watching.
For Mr Modi the opportunity is obvious. A few months into office, he is
courting a variety of big countries simultaneously, the better to
leverage one against the other," writes the Economist.
"Mr
Modi's energetic diplomacy in his first few months in office seems to
have put China on notice that Delhi is not without options in a rapidly evolving global geostrategic context.
It has increased India's strategic space which Mr Modi would now like
to leverage in his engagement with Beijing," writes Harsh V. Pant for
the BBC.
"Though India's foreign policy has a strong strain of continuity and a reassessment of China has been on for some time, it has picked up pace since Narendra Modi's rise to power in May.
The reasons have as much to do with the new prime minister's economic
priorities as much as his worldview," writes Debasish Roy Chowdhury for
the South China Morning Post.
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