POREG VIEW:  This report in the New York Times, based on official Xinhua news agency dispatches must have brought smile to the American and Indian officials, who have been dealing with Beijing.  Disagreements have marked the  US – China relations over a host of issues that range from the value of China’s currency, US military exercises off the Korean Peninsula and American efforts to resolve territorial disputes in the South China Sea. The India – China relations have also been seeing several lows along with an occasional high. All because of strategic trust deficit.

Going by Xinhua dispatches, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao told two visiting ranking White House officials that China and the United States should not view themselves as rivals. More or less same message was put out vis-à-vis India on Tuesday, Sept 7, by Chinese foreign office spokeswoman, Jiang Yu, who only a week earlier saw her own remarks on POK censored on her own ministry’s website.

So, China is quietly rooting for quiet diplomacy.

Two factors have prompted the ‘roll back’ – one an unusually blunt public comment on the state of India-China relations by a soft spoken, mild mannered Manmohan Singh; two the forthcoming winter state visit of President Hu Jintao to Washington and the American market potential.  

China wants to be seen as a friendly neighbour with grand vision. Public spat with the only super power and an emerging super power is not in China’s interest. It also doesn’t want to appear as the dragon on the prowl with its very own strategic version of trans-continental rail and road connectivity between Asia and Europe.

Realpolitik wrapped in an enigmatic smile!

Friends and adversaries can no longer say Beijing keeps them guessing all the time