President Pratibha Patil today arrived here to a red carpet welcome as the first Indian Headof the State to visit China in a decade for visit during which she will meet the top Chinese leadership and sign a number of agreements.

Beijing China and the US agreed to expand their students exchange programme to facilitate one lakh American students to study in this country and increase the number of Chinese doing research in the US over the next four years.

The most wide-ranging dialogue in the history of modern U.S.-China relations ended with some accord on contentious issues of currency and trade, but underlined a fundamental shift in the relationship between Washington and a newly assertive Beijing.

Few countries can attract global attention as much as the People’s Republic of China has done. The intelligentsia, policy makers, and ordinary citizens marvel at China’s ability to infiltrate every nook of the globe in very unassuming ways. This appears to be a threat to other imperial powers, those who have dominated the globe as if they have a natural right to do so.

The idea of a "G-2" was first introduced by C. Fred Bergsten, director of Peterson Institute for International Economic, as a mechanism for promoting agreement between the two sides primarily to address international economic issues. However, it migrated to strategic issues...

Amid the big U.S-China issues of the day—rising tensions over North Korea, the Strategic and Economic Dialogue between the two countries this week in Beijing — U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner took some time out Sunday for a half-court game of four-on-four with some students from a high school affiliated with Renmin University in the Chinese capital.

While China is often seen as the centre for the production of cheap and sometimes poor quality goods, there are certain other exports the world’s most populous nation hopes will endure: language and culture.

Despite the incredible energy Israelis spend on integrating with the American consensus - sending students to Harvard and MIT, scholarly hob knobbing and shoulder rubbing with policy institute doyens in Washington and political back scrubbing - no such efforts (or even signs of interest) are invested in developing relations with China.