China zoekt toenadering tot India - maar oud grensconflict wringt nog

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang is seeking to build trust with India on his first foreign trip since taking office, which comes just a few weeks after a military standoff between the Asian giants on their ill-defined border in the Himalayan mountains. The number two in the Chinese leadership offered India a "handshake across the Himalayas" in an editorial published on Monday in The Hindu newspaper and said that together the emerging economic giants could become a new engine of the world economy.

China and India disagree about large areas on their 4,000-km (2,500-mile) -long border and fought a brief but bloody war 50 years ago. There has not been a shooting incident in decades, but the long-running dispute gets in the way of improving economic relations between the world's two most populous nations. The editorial was part of a media campaign apparently aimed at cooling Indian public anger against China following the three-week standoff on a freezing Himalayan plateau that ended on May 3.