India's prime minister addressed a business conference Monday in China's capital at the start of a state visit highlighting deepening interaction between the Asian giants whose juggernaut economies are increasingly driving world trade, the Associated Press reported. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's three-day visit to China, the first by an Indian prime minister in five years, seeks to inject new vitality into the sometimes strained relationship between the two nations, whose combined population of nearly 2.4 billion accounts for one-third of humanity. Singh was due to meet with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao later Monday following a formal welcoming ceremony at the Great Hall of the People, the hulking seat of the national legislature beside Tiananmen Square in central Beijing. At the conference, Singh called for trade opportunities to expand in areas such as construction, education, financial services, and tourism. «Our two countries will need to work together to ensure that we contribute to ... the economic resurrection and the interrelations of Asia,» Singh said. Representatives of some of India's biggest companies attended the conference. Singh said India was willing to work with China to simplify regulations and remove other trade barriers. «Our two economies are becoming the engines of the economic growth and must use our natural and human resources, technologies and capital for the common benefit of our people of our region and indeed of the world as a whole,» he said. On Sunday, Singh met with members of the Indian business community, who complained about China's US$9 billion (¤6 billion) trade surplus with India and a lack of investment opportunities for Indian businesses in China, according to The Times of India daily. Singh has presided over an unprecedented expansion in contacts between India and China since taking office in 2004, with bilateral trade surging to US$37 billion (¤25.04 billion) last year. Direct flights have fueled growing numbers of visitors between the two countries, and their militaries late last year staged joint drills for the first time. During his visit, Singh was also due to meet President Hu Jintao and the Communist Party's No. 2 ranking official, Wu Bangguo. He planned to address a government think tank and co-preside over a ceremony marking the founding of a joint medical team.
