'Mutual distrust could hinders India-China cooperation'

Mutual distrust between India and China could hinder the economic cooperation between the two countries, experts said on Tuesday.

They, however, agreed the two neighbours could work jointly to address some of the common problems they face.

"Currently, the lack of distrust in military and strategic domain tends to spill over into our economic relationship. We have to find a way to insulate them or depoliticize economic relationship," said senior journalist Mihir Sharma.

"And that's something which we have not been able to do so far," he sid, at a discussion on "The Future of China-India Bilateral Economic Relationship" here.

Sharma said the distrust was the centre of the India-China relationship.

"The (Indian) government continues to be uncomfortable with the idea that our telecommunication backbone would technically be built in China or have some kind of connection to China," he said.

Sharma also noted India's ONGC's moves to invest in Vietnam could cause concern in China.

Ramgopal Agarwala, a former chief economist of the World Bank, said that China was a very complicated country and India need to deal with it very carefully.

"It (India) requires nimble footwork of a ballet dancer but we are from that," he said;

Agarwala, however, stressed that moving towards clean energy, and dealing with global warming were some the issues on which these countries could wok together.