Chinese Premier Li Keqiang's maiden visit to India symbolises the rising significance of New Delhi as the two Asian giants seek to overcome a chequered past and border tensions to broaden strategic ties and boost bilateral trade.
Premier Li arrives in India on Sunday on his first foreign trip since assuming office. He would also visit Pakistan, Germany and Switzerland during the week-long foray.
China and India, despite both being founding members of the BRICS group of developing nations and having increasingly close economic relations, have long looked with suspicion at each other following a brief border war in 1962, which China won.
Both countries were involved in a renewed border standoff on the icy Himalayan mountains which calmed down this month after India agreed to a Chinese demand to demolish a remote army position, a topic discussed when India's foreign minister visited China last week.
Both sides tried to play down the flare up and have signalled their desire to make progress on the border dispute.
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China says the resolution of the border dispute with India showed the two countries' commitment to their relations while New Delhi has asserted that the boundary dispute should be pursued by both countries as a strategic objective.
"It is our conviction that an early settlement of the boundary question will advance the basic interest of the two countries and we therefore feel it should be pursued as a strategic objective by both countries," Ministry of External Affairs spokesman Syed Akbaruddin said.
Sino-India experts say there is much more than mere symbolism in Premier Li's decision to choose India as the first country he visits after assuming office.
"The symbolism obviously is very obvious but I don't think we should stop at that because underlying the symbolism is a very substantial commitment to the importance of keeping this relationship going, moving forward. Li Keqiang is clearly signalling his intent to continue with the legacy of Hu (Jintao) Wen (Jiabao) era in terms of taking this relationship with India to more progressive kind of levels," said Alka Acharya, a leading Sino-India expert and director of the Institute of Chinese Studies in New Delhi.
Chinese foreign ministry said that Premier Li will hold talks with Indian Prime Minister Singh and will meet with other Indian leaders during the visit before heading off to traditional friend and India's nuclear-armed rival Pakistan.
Acharya said Beijing was trying to keep its traditional friend Pakistan happy by visiting Islamabad in the same visit, but was also signalling its keenness to grow relations with New Delhi, which have seen the economic ties flourishing over the past decade.
China is India's biggest trading partner and the two countries aim to increase their bilateral trade to $100 billion by 2015.
According to the figures released by the Chinese trade ministry, last year the bilateral trade stood at 66.47 billion dollars with India's trade deficit mounting to 28.87 billion dollars.
The widening trade imbalance skewed in favour of China remains a major worry for Indian policy makers.
Acharya said the gap in their manufacturing capabilities prevents India from matching China, adding that given the history of relations between the two nations, security concerns prohibited India to push the relationship beyond a point.
"Difficult issues - How do we handle the problem of this increasing trade deficit. Given the fact that India has certain concerns in the security field, we cannot push the relationship in the way in which it could be done if the concerns were not there. For instance, the Chinese are very keen to invest in India but we clearly have certain areas which we will not open up. Infrastructure is again a double edged kind of an issue," she said.
However, on the streets of India - there is almost a glut of Chinese goods from toddlers' toys to home decor solutions.
Shops specialising in selling only Chinese goods have mushroomed across India, drawing huge crowds because of their price pull.
In Gurgaon, on the outskirts of the Indian capital, one such China bazaar, has become a major shopping landmark in the city's traditional wholesale market.
Shop owner Mohammad Dilshad Qureshi attributed the cheap prices for attracting customers to his store.
"The Chinese products come cheap, we sell them cheap that is why they are so popular. For instance, if you just look at the Chinese mobile phones, they sell for just about two to three thousand rupees and a lot of people buy them because they are cheap," Qureshi said.
While on one side businessmen like Qureshi are laughing their way to bank on the back of robust sales of Chinese products, there are others - especially small manufacturers-who lament the loss of their businesses to cheap Chinese imports.
Experts would be keenly watching every word and every move that Li makes in India and then his subsequent gestures in Pakistan to gauge the future of Beijing's relationship with its south Asian neighbours.
