Zhenjiang also ranks among China's wealthier cities. Its per capita gross domestic product, officials say, was $5,000 in 2006, or more than double the $1,970 recorded in China overall. Moreover, says Shi Heping, party secretary of the local Communist party committee, “Zhenjiang's vinegar is the best in the world”.
But when, as leader of a trade mission to New Delhi, Mr Shi proudly ran through his city's attributes and plans for the future one afternoon in May, the audience of a few dozen members of the Confederation of Indian Industry appeared uninterested. When it was time for questions, the lack of interest turned into thinly-veiled hostility tinged with jealousy. Mr Shi “is inviting Indians to invest in Zhenjiang,” fired the first questioner. “I would like to ask of him: What are his plans to invest in India? Does he have any?”
The communist functionary did his best to answer. With his delegation were local businessmen, all of whom were examining opportunities in India, he said. But the next question offered little respite. “What percentage of people in business [in Zhenjiang] speak English?” demanded the “principal adviser” of a nearby state government. “Because not many of us speak Chinese!”
Mr Shi was experiencing the competitive tension at the commercial coalface of Sino-Indian relations. Sixty years after independence and 58 after the People's Republic of China was born, Asia's two population behemoths are back in a place they have been before – being touted as the region's two emerging great powers. And that can breed plenty of rivalry.
This time is different, of course, from the heady post-colonial days of the 1950s when both countries were celebrated as anchor members of the non-aligned movement. They are emerging economic powers embarked on the early stages of a journey that many argue makes this century theirs for the taking. The two have set aside unresolved border disputes that have plagued relations in the past. They also have evolving diplomatic and economic relationships that are fuelling a pragmatic détente on security matters.
The value of trade between the two countries is expected to surpass $30bn this year, largely in the form of iron ore and other raw materials India sells to China and the cheap consumer goods China sends back. But Mr Sun argues trade should easily reach $50bn by 2010.
What the current state of the relationship means and where it is heading depends on the vantage point from which you view it. The US has made little effort to conceal the fact that in India's democracy it sees a counterweight to China's rise and that a 2005 civilian nuclear pact with India came in that context. But US officials have also expressed frustration with the hard bargaining positions adopted by India as the two countries have hammered out the details, something viewed with approval in New Delhi where a Nehruvian insistence on an independent foreign policy remains.
Richard Hu, a Hong Kong University expert on China's international relations, argues that Beijing's growing comfort with India has come amid China's own growing confidence in the region and India's decision to begin trying to secure a role for itself beyond the sub-continent. Mr Hu says that may be in part because one-party China still views India's experience with democracy as a brake on its economy and a cautionary parable when it comes to political reform. China's leaders, he argues, “see more weakness than strength in India's model”.
In New Delhi, analysts appear resigned to the emergence of China as Asia's pre-eminent power, thanks to the 13-year head start it had on economic reforms and its authoritarian ability to deliver runaway growth. But there are also those who insist that plenty of tension – and more than a little jealousy – lurks below the surface.
Meanwhile, the 1962 Sino-Indian War, which saw China seize two disputed Himalayan regions, remains “writ very large in the Indian psyche and the Indian psyche doesn't change very rapidly”. For all the present warmth, at the end of the day “both of us are still fairly cagey of each other,” Mr Kumar says.
