Chinese President Xi Jinping (File photo)
Chinese President Xi Jinping's trip to India highlights a subtle shift in the regional power dynamics. While on the one hand, it marks warmer ties between the two Asian giants, challenging China's traditional relationship with Pakistan, on the other, it opens a new chapter in Beijing's ongoing competition for influence with arch-rival Japan.
Xi is due in New Delhi on Wednesday for a three-day visit focused on trade, investment and the resolution of decades-old border disputes. As the world's second-largest economy and with a proven track record at building highways, railways, and industrial zones, China has much to offer India.
While ties between India and China have been steadily growing for years, it got a major boost under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has signalled his wishes to pursue a more vigorous foreign policy. Xi is the first Chinese head of state to visit India in eight years, while Prime Minister Li Keqiang made India his first overseas destination shortly after taking office last year.
In the first weeks of his administration, PM Modi spoke repeatedly to senior Chinese officials, and during a recent visit to India, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi described the new relationship as "the emerging tip of a massive buried treasure."
There's certainly plenty of room for growth. China may be India's biggest trading partner, but commerce between the two countries dropped to an anemic $65 billion last year, with China exporting $48 billion more goods than it imported.
For PM Modi, boosting trade and foreign investment is critical to making good on his campaign promise of creating jobs for the 13 million youths entering the job market each year.
China also has a strong vested interested in preventing India from drawing too close to the West and especially to Japan, which has enthusiastically courted the Modi government.
Recently, PM Modi paid a five-day visit to Japan, bringing home pledges of billions of dollars in aid and investment and an agreement to strengthen their economic and security ties. While in Japan, he also emphasised on the value of their shared commitment to democracy -- in contrast to China's authoritarian communist system.
In the light of that visit, Xi is expected to make investment pledges matching or exceeding the $35 billion Mr Modi received in Japan - a sign of how the Indian PM has been able to leverage the rivalry between China and Japan to maximize gains for India.
"Good relations with India are a key part of China's regional strategy and Xi's visit creates the opportunity for direct face-to-face communication on problems that still exist, such as the border issue," said Zhao Gancheng, Director of the Asia-Pacific Center of the Shanghai Institute for International Studies.
While both Xi and Modi are strong leaders who've shown initiative, they're constrained on the border issue by domestic sentiment, particularly rising nationalism in China, said Jayadev Ranade, president of the New Delhi-based think tank Center for China Analysis and Strategy.
"I don't see a major breakthrough on the border issue. But even if it is discussed in a tangible fashion, which I expect the Modi government will do, it will be a move forward," he said.
Talks have yet to produce a long-term solution, but until they do, China says its policy is to avoid conflict.
Xi, however, won't be stopping in on long-time ally Pakistan - a further evidence of a growing Chinese ambivalence toward Pakistan. In past, China and Pakistan had found common cause in checking India's growth as a regional power, but China's own stratospheric rise has alleviated that need.
Beijing also has grown increasingly concerned with the threat to stability in its northwestern region of Xinjiang posed by Islamic radicals hiding out in northwestern Pakistan.
At the same time, Pakistan's political dysfunction and economic malaise offer little incentive for Chinese companies to take on the sort of major projects there that they're now eyeing for India.