"I hope each and every one of you will bring India closer to China, so that you can be the true architects of the Asian century marked by the resurgent friendship between India and China," she said at a reception held in honor of the delegation at the Indian Embassy.

Aiyar said he hoped more young people would be sent to visit one another's countries and that they would spend more time there and visit more regions, since such visits would help enhance mutual understanding.

Anil Gupta, a professor of Global Strategy and Entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland, shared similar views. He noted that a great deal needed to be done by China and India at the level of understanding, since the knowledge they had about each other was still poor-something that poses a barrier to the development of the two countries' relations. At the same time, he pointed out, China and India, with their similarities as well as differences, would undergo a process of convergence.

Based on comparisons of their main economic indexes such as GDP, exports, imports, foreign exchange reserves and foreign direct investment, he said he had reached the conclusion that India's present economy was roughly 12 years behind China. Gupta substantiated this with the fact that India had started liberalization and global economic integration in 1991, whereas China started the processes in the late 1970s. He suggested that the 12-year gap between the Indian economy and the Chinese economy could be the result of the 12-year gap in liberalization and global economic integration in the two countries.

Gupta observed that there are a few obvious comparisons between the two countries: they have the largest populations; they are two fast growing economies; they are the only two developing countries in the top 10 GDP economies in the world; and they are mega markets with customers with potentially huge purchasing power and pools of scientists and engineers.

As for differences, he stated, China was far ahead of India in manufacturing, whereas India boasted advantages over China in the information technology sector and in globalization. However, given the fact that people in rural areas were not going to work in the IT sector, he underscored the need for India to learn from China and create low-skilled manufacturing jobs.

"The economic salvation of India is as much in the knowledge sector as in the manufacturing sector, or perhaps even more so," Gupta said. "Over the next 30 years, just as China is building its capabilities in the IT sector and the service sector, the Indian industrial revolution has begun. I see a process of convergence between these two economies over time."

Aiyar asserted that while the two countries had made a lot of progress in inter-governmental, inter-company, inter-academic and inter-personal relations, the outstanding problems between the two countries would have to be resolved before they could forge ahead together. He said that while 99.9 percent of Indians and Chinese want to be friends with each other, the remaining 0.1 percent still had problems with the historical past.

"Until we change the 0.1 percent, we won't really be able to get on with the 99.9 percent," Gupta said. "I hope my ambassador and everyone else who is concerned with the outstanding problems do their job very quickly, so that the rest of us can get on with building the India-China relationship. It is very important that we get to know each other and that we march ahead shoulder to shoulder."