MUMBAI, 24 November 2006 — Asia will dominate the next century if China and India can strengthen their trade and business links, China’s President Hu Jintao said at the end of a visit here.
The visit was marred by a Tibetan activist setting himself on fire outside the Taj Mahal Hotel, where Hu was staying. Despite tight security, the Tibetan youth, identified as Lhakpa, succeeded in pouring kerosene and torching himself. He raised slogans against the Chinese government as the police doused the flames around his legs and whisked him away.
Protesters wearing T-shirts saying “China get out of Tibet” and “Chinese - cheap quality, cheap friends,” jostled with police before being bundled away to a nearby police station.
Elsewhere, about 200 Tibetans and their Indian supporters protested at another location close to Hu’s hotel to protest against what they called “the massacre of innocent Tibetans” fleeing their homeland.
Away from the protest, Hu pressed on with the message of more cooperation between the two South Asian giants. “We need to move toward a free-trade agreement and boost bilateral trade further, particular along the borders,” said Hu, whose four-day visit to India was the first by a Chinese president in a decade.
“If India and China take the necessary steps to strengthen trade and business, the 21st century will be Asia’s,” he told business and government leaders from both nations in India’s financial hub Mumbai before heading to Pakistan on the final leg of his South Asian tour.
India’s Commerce and Industries Minister Kamal Nath echoed Hu’s call for greater economic ties, saying: “We must add ‘mass’ and ‘items’ to the trade basket.” During his speech, Hu, accompanied by a nearly 120-member business delegation, also called for more energy cooperation, saying “it will help us bid for third country contracts better.”
India and China have increasingly been competitors as they scramble globally for energy and mineral resources to feed their fast-growing economies.
Earlier in the visit, the world’s two most populous nations agreed to double trade to $40 billion by 2010 and speed efforts to settle a long-festering border row that brought them to war in 1962. Hu declared Wednesday in New Delhi he had visited India to enhance “mutual trust” and “chart a new course” for strategic relations. Hu called his talks Tuesday with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the Indian capital “fruitful.”
“China does not seek any selfish gains in South Asia and is ready to play a constructive role in promoting peace and development in the subcontinent,” Hu said, as he welcomed improved relations between India and Pakistan which have fought three wars since independence in 1947.
The Chinese president was dogged throughout his visit by Tibetan protesters demonstrating against what they called China’s illegal occupation of Tibet. Dozens were arrested.
China reiterated its claim to Tibet yesterday following the protests organized by the Tibetan Youth Congress in which hundreds of demonstrators took part.
“The Tibet autonomous region has been an integral part of China since ancient times and Tibetan affairs are the internal affairs of China,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said in Beijing.
India recognizes Tibet as part of China but has given asylum to tens of thousands of Tibetans.
Before his final speech, the Chinese president met the family of an Indian doctor who died while treating Chinese troops during the 1937-1945 Sino-Japanese war and who has become a symbol of warming ties between Beijing and New Delhi.
Ten members of Dwarkanath Kotnis’ family met Hu at his hotel and presented him with a handmade bedspread from Solapur town in western India where the doctor was born.
“We’re very happy he spent time with us,” said 85-year-old Manorama Kotnis, Dwarkanath’s sister.
Hu, in return, gave the family an album of photos of the doctor during his time in China. Kotnis died at the front in 1942 but lives on in Chinese textbooks and on postage stamps.
“I fully appreciate what Dr. Kotnis has done toward maintaining Indo-Chinese friendship,” Hu told the family.
Hu was seen off at the airport by Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, Deputy Chief Minister R.R. Patil, state Chief Secretary D.K. Shankaran and Mumbai Sheriff Vijaypat Singhania.
— With input from agencies
