For the more than 300 students and teachers from Peking University who listened to visiting Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's speech yesterday, Sino-Indian relations seemed that much closer when they realized how involved Sino-Indian ties are.

"I think there is no reason for the two countries to regard each other as enemies since their friendship can be traced back more than one thousand years," said Gao Yan, a graduate student of the School of Foreign Languages at the university.

The 78-year-old prime minister attended a ceremony to mark the opening of a Centre for Indian Studies at Peking University before his speech. He promised that New Delhi would provide US$21,500 a year to support it and a scholarship for one of its Chinese students to visit India.

In his half-hour-long speech at the Overseas Exchange Centre of the university, Vajpayee called for closer co-operation between the two countries, stressing "combined strength" and "complementarity" of the India-China partnership.

"We are both at the forefront of developing and applying the technologies, which drive the knowledge-based economy.

"If we acted in concert, it would be very difficult for the world to ignore us.

"We should focus on the simple truth that there is no objective reason for discord between us, and neither of us is a threat to the other," he said.

Vajpayee brought a 40-plus entrepreneurs delegation along with senior leaders.

Amit Mitra, secretary-general of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, told China Daily yesterday that at least five companies in the visiting business group have factories in China.

Although trade between India and China is growing, it remains at a very low level given that the two nations have more than a third of the world's population, said Mitra.

According to Chinese figures, Sino-Indian trade volume in the last four months reached US$2.31 billion, of which China's exports to India were US$980 million, up 42 per cent, while China's imports totalled US$1.33 billion, up 101 per cent.

India and China have witnessed an improvement in their economic exchanges from simple cargo trade to comprehensive co-operation covering trade, project contracts and mutual investment, said Mitra.

"It (co-operation) gives us the reason to have good expectations of India-China economic relations," he said.

(China Daily 06/24/2003 page1)