Relations With China
While India and China remain strategic rivals, India's "Look East" policy has included significant rapprochement with China. Since 1993, India began holding high-level talks with Chinese leaders and established Confidence-building measures. In 2006, China and India opened the Nathu La Pass for cross-border trade for the first time since the 1962 war. On November 21, 2006 Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the Chinese President Hu Jintao issued a 10-point joint declaration to improve ties and resolve long-standing conflicts. Trade between China and India increases by 50% each year, and is set to reach the $60 billion target set for 2010 by both Indian and Chinese governments and industrial leaders. However, China's close relations with Pakistan, skepticism about India's annexation of Sikkim, and Chinese claim over Arunachal Pradesh have threatened the improvement in bilateral relations. India's providing asylum to the political-cum-spiritual leader, the 14th Dalai Lama also causes some friction in bilateral ties.
Chinese commentators have been critical of India's Look East policy. A People's Daily editorial opined that the Look East policy was "born out of failure" of India's trying to play the Soviet Union and the United States against each other for its own benefit during the Cold War, and that trying to do the same with China and Japan by strengthening its ties with the latter would also fail. A columnist at the China Internet Information Center criticized the Look East policy as being borne out of a misguided "fear of China" and as reflecting "a lack of understanding of the PLA's strategic ambitions".
Read more about this topic: Look East Policy
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