Having gingerly circled around each other like two cautious pugilists for the past decades, India and China may be taking their first step in the creation of an Asian synergy that has much more to do with making real money than the rhetorical bombast of anti-imperialist morality.
Last week in Beijing, within days of China announcing that it would vote against a resolution led by India and Japan to expand the UN Security Council, vice chairman Zhang Xiaoqiang of China’s National Development and Reform Commission was feting Talmiz Ahmad, an Indian diplomat seconded to the Oil and Petroleum Ministry in New Delhi with the task of creating energy partnerships abroad.