Print

Mail

wiki links

Wen urges cooperation with India

"Cooperation is just like two pagodas. One hardware and one software. Combined we can take the leadership position in the world."

Wen Jiabao, China's prime minister

Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) yesterday began a tour of India's high-tech capital and called for closer cooperation to launch the "Asian century" of information technology.

India's software skills combined with China's dominance in hardware can trigger a tectonic shift in the global technological landscape, Wen said at the offices of Tata Consultancy Services, the country's biggest provider of software development and outsourcing services.

"Cooperation is just like two pagodas. One hardware and one software. Combined we can take the leadership position in the world," Wen told reporters.

He will also visit the Bangalore offices of Huawei Technologies, China's largest telecoms maker which employs 800 Indian and 30 Chinese and plans to invest US$100 million in the country.

Wen will also tour India's national space agency and the Indian Institute of Science and Technology in Bangalore.

He arrived in the city Saturday from Sri Lanka on a tour of South Asian nations that also included Pakistan and Bangladesh.

The Chinese premier was scheduled to meet Foreign Minister Natwar Singh in New Delhi later yesterday, and will meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today, to discuss a possible free-trade agreement and a long-running border dispute that led to a brief war in 1962.

Manufacturing hub

China, the world's fastest-growing major economy, is a manufacturing hub for mobile phones, textiles, cars and industrial equipment and is eyeing cooperation with India to expand its access to software.

"If India and China cooperate in the information technology industry we will be able to lead the world technology industry and when that particular day comes it will signify the coming of the Asian century of the IT industry," Wen said.

India's software sector contributes 4 percent to the country's gross domestic product and grew 43 percent during the fiscal year to last month. The industry is expected to earn US$75 billion by 2008.

The technology sector has added US$45 billion to India's foreign exchange reserves since 1998 and employs 850,000 people, according to government figures.

Wen noted that India's growth in software mirrors China's efforts in manufacturing.

Mobile phones

"Just a few years ago we used to produce 5 million cellphones anually and now we are producing more than 100 million phones. Now China has more than 500 million phones, of which 50 percent are fixed lines and 50 percent are mobile phones," he said.

On his arrival Saturday in Bangalore Wen said he hoped to narrow differences on the border dispute and take ties between the two economic powerhouses to a "new high."

Indian officials say the agenda for talks will be topped by business, including a possible free trade zone encompassing 2.3 billion consumers, one-third of the world's population.

But as Wen touched down from Sri Lanka about 120 Tibetan students who have been put under house arrest began a 24-hour hunger strike to protest against the Chinese occupation of Tibet.

The spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists, the Dalai Lama, fled his homeland in 1959 after the Chinese occupation and set up a government-in-exile in the northern Indian city of Dharamsala.

"The strike is still continuing," a spokesman for the Tibetan National Democratic Party said.
This story has been viewed 2250 times.