Sonia Gandhi to visit China as ties show strain

By Simon Denyer

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's most powerful politician, Sonia Gandhi, heads to China this week to set the stage for a summit between the Asian heavyweights, as relations between the rivals show renewed signs of strain.

Gandhi, head of the Congress party and the ruling coalition, is due to arrive in China on Thursday, setting the stage for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to visit later this year or early next.

"The two visits should be seen in terms of improving the atmospherics and communications at the highest level," said Srikanth Kondapalli at New Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University. "But the two countries are actually trying to hedge each other."

Decades of mistrust between the neighbours date back to a 1962 war, and this year has seen an apparent setback in the long-running border dispute which sparked that conflict.

These days they talk the language of cooperation, but more often than not they are locked in competition, whether for global influence or for the raw materials and energy they need to fuel Asia's two fastest growing economies.

Singh's assertion during Chinese Premier Hu Jintao's visit in 2007, that there was "enough space for the two countries to develop together", is more an expression of hope than conviction, said Mohan Malik of the Power and Interest News Report.

"The relationship between the two rising Asian giants with overlapping spheres of influence and disputed frontiers will be characterised more by competition and rivalry than by cooperation," he said.