Amid all the talk of closer business ties between Asia’s two great emerging economies, Monday’s inaugural meeting of the India-China chief executives’ forum in New Delhi could scarcely have asked for two more appropriate chairmen.
Billionaire Anil Ambani of India’s Reliance group and Hu Huaibang of China Development Bank presided over an event designed to coincide with Chinese premier Li Keqiang’s debut visit to India this week, and both talked up the odds that their countries could meet a $100bn trade target by 2015.
It was an act the two men had practised before, however, not least as Mr Ambani’s conglomerate has moved to raise more than $5bn in loans from China over the past few years, much of it co-ordinated by Mr Hu’s bank, as part of a pattern of cash-strapped Indian companies seeking cheap Chinese financing.