China welcomes India`s rise as a major power: top CPC leader

New Delhi, Oct 19 (PTI) Ahead of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's second visit to China within this year, a senior Chinese leader said on Sunday that Beijing welcomes and supports India's rise and sees it as "mutually beneficial".

"We welcome, support and hope to see the development of
India because we believe it will provide opportunities for
China as well. Likewise, we also believe that India also sees
China in the same way," Yu Zhengsheng, Politburo member of the
ruling Communist Party of China (C.P.C.) Central Committee
said here.

"In recent years the relationship between our two
countries –- state-to-state, government-to-government, people
-to-people –- have witnessed rapid development. Bilateral ties
between our two countries are now in very good shape," Yu,
also secretary of C.P.C. in Shanghai, China's economic hub,
told P.T.I. in an interview.

Prime Minister Singh is scheduled to visit Beijing from
October 23-25 to attend the Seventh Asia-Europe Summit. Singh
is expected to meet with China's top leadership during his
stay in the Chinese capital. Singh, who had visited China for
the first time in January this year, had a meeting with his
Chinese counterpart Wen Jiabao in New York on September 25 on
the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly session.

Yu is currently on a visit to India at the invitation of
Congress President Sonia Gandhi. Apart from meeting with
the Chairperson of the U.P.A., Yu had separate meetings with
External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Commerce Minister
Kamal Nath and B.J.P. president Rajnath Singh.

Yu said that economic prosperity and development and
China and India were "mutually beneficial" for the two nations
because as more countries become richer, the opportunities to
create wealth are also enhanced.

Yu noted that recent years have witnessed the emergence
of some major developing countries like China and India which
have contributed enormously to the world economy.

"However, some people in the world see the emergence of
the developing countries as a threat to them," Yu said.

"On the one hand we can say that those people are not
broad-minded and on the other hand we can say that they don't
have enough knowledge of the success of their own economy,"
Yu, who presides over the booming economy of Shanghai
municipality, one of China's major growth engines.

The senior C.P.C. leader noted that last year, the
bilateral trade between China and India jumped to over U.S.D.
38 billion and this year, the trade it is expected to touch
U.S.D. 50 billion, a new record.

"The growth rate in China-India bilateral trade is one
of the fastest among China's trading partners," he said.

Yu also noted that since the beginning of this year,
the growth rate in exports from India to China was growing
faster than China's exports to India.

"It is a very good thing as trade balance is the
target of the Chinese government not only for the benefit of
other countries but for our own benefit," he said.

"In the longer term what we seek is a balance in
foreign trade," Yu said, referring to India's concern that the
trade deficit in bilateral trade was sharply rising in China's
favour as Beijing was mostly procuring raw materials like iron
ore from the country.

In the first half of 2008, India-China trade reached
U.S.D. 29 billion, up by 68.7 percent over the corresponding
period of last year.

During Singh's visit to China, the two sides announced
the agreement to raise the trade target for 2010 from U.S.D.
40 billion to 60 billion. The feasibility study on a Regional
Trading Arrangement between the two sides also has been
finished. PTI