Some 400 Chinese business leaders accompanying Wen to India

NEW DELHI - Chiefs of top Chinese firms like power equipment major Shanghai Electric, metals refiner SinoSteel and telecom gear giants ZTE and Huewei are among 400 business leaders coming here on a three-day visit with Premier Wen Jiabao from Dec 15, officials said.

The focus of the official visit of the Chinese premier, on an invite from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, will be mainly business, like how to bridge the gaping trade deficit and forge better ties in infrastructure building between the two Asian giants, they said.

Deals worth some $20 billion in finance, infrastructure, energy, telecom and pharma are likely to be finalised during the visit — a third more than $15 billion worth of pacts unveiled during US President Barack Obama’s visit here last month, the officials added.

“The development of diversified trade, tourism and investment cooperation is crucial to reducing the trade imbalance, currently in favour of China, and achieving the bilateral target of $60 billion this year,” said Zhang Yan, Beijing’s envoy in New Delhi.

India-China bilateral trade currently stands at $51 billion but the trade deficit, which has been a sore point, had touched $19 billion last year and $16 billion in 2008, from just $1 billion in 2002. It could swell further to $24 billion this year.

China is also India’s largest trading partner.

Zhang said here that the two sides must also move towards a regional free-trade pact and remove trade and investment barriers without the border issue standing in the way that has often raised some non-tariff obstacles to Sino-India economic relations.

“When China and India join hands, they can make a positive impact, not just in their respective countries but on the world at large, he said ahead of Wen’s visir, adding this was also necessary since both countries faced enormous development challenges.

According to officials at leading Indian industry lobbies facilitating the business leg of the Chinese premier’s visit, the composition and size of firms represented in Wen’s business delegation shows the interest India is generating among the firms there.

ZTE, for example, employs more than 1,000 people in India with 90-percent of its staff sourced locally, while SinoSteel is setting up an integrated steel plant in West Bengal with a capacity of 1 million tonnes per annum.

This apart, both ZTE and Huawei are preferred equipment providers to India telecom firms and Shanghai Electric Corp recently bagged a whopping $10-billion contract from the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani group for their various power projects in India.

At an interaction hosted by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) here Monday, Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao, a former Indian envoy in Beijing, also pushed for greater ties between the two wides.

We need greater synergy and dialogue to explore the lessons that we could draw from the Chinese model of infrastructure development, Rao said, adding there must also be a move for “congruence and cooperation” in ties in a spirit of “competition and collaboration”.