Beijing, Jan 19 (IANS) The border row between India and China “is moving towards an agreed framework” and the two countries need to develop strategic ties, a visiting Indian professor has said.

“The boundary issue is moving towards an agreed framework, and the two countries must now develop a strategic partnership to realize the Asian century,” Mukul Sanwal said in a commentary in China Daily.

A former Indian government official, Sanwal described India and China as competitors and said their difficulties in achieving long-term cooperation reflected lingering attitudes rather than conflicting strategic goals.

“In the emerging multi-polar world, major powers will have to come to some sort of accommodation with each other, shaped by three strategic shifts,” wrote Sanwal, a visiting professor at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing.

First, a significant shift of power was taking place from the US to Asia as the driver of global politics. Second, India’s growth was different from China’s. Third, New Delhi and Beijing were now cooperating on major global issues.

He said the US was encouraging India to join it in securing a military balance of power in Asia. “But any such treaty or understanding would be implicitly against China.”

Sanwal said the policy issue before India was: will it work with China to decisively shape the future of Asia and become a major participant in world politics, or, will it partner with the US to contain China, so that it can become a regional power?

China, he pointed out, was now India’s biggest trading partner.

Trade and business ties between China and India have soared from some $5 billion in 2002 to more than $60 billion in 2010, and the aim was to boost trade over the next five years to $100 billion annually.

While India’s workforce would increase by 110 million over the next decade, China’s would rise by less than 20 million. This could push India’s growth rate ahead of China’s.

“The drivers of competition between the two countries will therefore be shaped by water and energy rather than by efforts to expand trade.

“The perspective that energy is a zero-sum game is a Western construct, as they are profligate users of energy and see it as an integral part of their way of life.”

He added: “Both India and China want to secure their energy supplies, and since the oil supplies for both cross the Indian Ocean, the answer lies in developing a joint strategic doctrine for this zone.”

Sanwal said India and China were coordinating their actions on climate change and trade negotiations, the restructuring of global economic institutions and opposition to military interventions.

“The foreign policy challenge for both countries is to work together to build networks of institutions and relationships that will support a new global order.”