India taking advantage of China-Japan disputes: Chinese expert

India is taking advantage of China-Japan disputes to gain economic and technological benefits though it has been restrained in developing close defence ties with Tokyo to avoid any negative influence on Sino-Indian relations, a Chinese expert says.
Japan wants to strengthen its alliance with India to contain China while India takes advantage of the territorial disputes between China and Japan for economic and technological benefits, Wang Dehua, Director of the Institute of South Asia and Central Asia Studies at the Shanghai Centre for International Studies said commenting on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to Tokyo in May this year.
So far, New Delhi has showed restraint in its defence and security cooperation with Tokyo, because it is clear that any close alliance would have a negative influence on its relationship with Beijing, Wang told state-run Global Times.

The daily today carried an article "Threat or Chance?" on Singh's visit to Tokyo as well as India's Look East Policy aimed at developing relations with Japan and a host of South East Asian countries, currently at loggerheads with China over various maritime disputes.
Wang said India's efforts to develop ties with Japan is a part of its Look East policy, first developed and enacted to reinvigorate India's relationship with ASEAN countries, and later extended to South Korea and Japan.
"India's Look East policy has a dual nature, with both an intention to contain China in defence and security and an intention to strengthen bilateral cooperation in economy and trade," Wang said.

"We should stay alert in defence and security, but we also should try to combine China's strategy with the Look East policy to boost bilateral cooperation," he said.

This is second such article published by Global Times, run by the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC) which also carried the view of several Indian strategic analysts.
Earlier it had carried a more provocative article almost coinciding with Singh's Japan visit in which it attacked Japan accusing it of attempting to forge alliances with India and other neighbours to "encircle China".
"Given the long-lasting Diaoyu Islands dispute (called Senkakus in Japan) and China-India border confrontation, there may be some tacit understanding in strategic cooperation between India and Japan," it said.

"Overheated strategic cooperation with the (Shinzo) Abe administration can only bring trouble to India and threaten its relationships with the relevant East Asian countries," it said.