After firming up economic and trade ties with Japan and Malaysia this week that gives India its longed-for footprint in East Asia, Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh arrived in Hanoi for the 8th Asean-India summit and the 5th East Asia Summit to be held in the Vietnamese capital on Saturday. India’s bid to integrate its economy with
that of the Asian tigers is part of a strategy to thread its own string of pearls in the east Asian region to counter China’s bid to encircle India. There will be more links in the chain when Delhi duplicates the accords reached with Japan and Malaysia with similar economic and trade co-operation agreements with Indonesia and Thailand in the coming months. The process has already been set in motion, sources said, pointing to the invitation extended to Indonesian President Susilo Yudhoyono, to be the chief guest at the Republic Day function in 2011 as the first step towards tying up the deal with Jakarta.
Sources said India signed an economic agreement with virulently anti-Chinese South Korea, months after the South Korean leader Lee Myung Bak graced the 2010 Republic Day parade following which the bilateral arrangement was raised to the level of a strategic relationship. Dr Singh meets Mr Bak a day ahead of the summits on Friday. Delhi and Singapore have also arrived at a similar agreement, with sources saying that the eagerness to build strategic ties by Asian nations with India was a two way street. “Look at where we have reached. We expected the bilateral economic agreements to be put on a slow track and for the Asean agreements to run parallel if not faster. But in an indicator that the strategic co-operation was a priority, the country to country agreements came together. Clearly, India cannot but be a part of the Asian story.” China, whose Premier Wen Jiabao meets Prime Minister Singh on Friday ahead of the concurrent summits has watched as India has inched closer to countries in China’s neighbourhood. In a clear message of reassurance to Beijing, however, Dr Singh said during a lecture in Malaysia that India seeks engagement with China, and that there was enough room for both China and India to grow. Sources said the meeting with the Chinese leader (under a cloud after Beijing, giving the first indicators of a leadership struggle for the top job issued a gag order on Mr Jiabao’s call to lift curbs) would be used to convey India’s concerns over the growing trade deficit in China’s favour, a direct fall-out of the devaluation of the Chinese currency. Questions remain on whether he will gloss over the niggling visa issue.
China has already been sounded out about India’s concerns over the devaluation of the yen, and “China was receptive,” sources said. But a source close to the meeting also said: “There may not be enough time as the meeting is scheduled for forty minutes, half of which will be spent in translation, leaving very little time for a substantive exchange.”
The EAS includes the ten Asean countries as well as six countries from the extended neighbourhood which significantly, this time, includes the United States and Russia, and will see the presence of US secretary of state Hillary Clinton at the lakefront hotel. The Indian Premier is here at the invitation of Vietnam, the current chair of Asean. Delhi has steadily built ties with Hanoi, with a focus on strengthening military and strategic ties, marked by the first visit to the Vietnamese capital by an Indian Army Chief in ten years. Vietnam’s ageing Soviet era naval and air fleet has been beefed up by India which has some expertise in that area. Joint patrols and joint exercises with Vietnam and Malaysia navies are also on course.