India opens huge aviation trade show

Air Vice Marshal Zheng Yuanlin was heading a five-person group at the five-day Aero India show after New Delhi extended a formal invitation to China in January.

“They've confirmed their attendance,” defense ministry spokesman Sitanshu Kar told AFP late on Tuesday. “It's the first time India has invited a Chinese delegation from Beijing.”

The last Aero India in 2011 saw India initially snub China, but the Chinese ambassador in New Delhi was allowed to attend in a negotiated compromise.

Suspicion of China runs deep in the Indian military and hawkish comments from senior commanders often conflict with the political leadership, which tends to stress the need for a partnership between Asia's two biggest nations.

India and China claim parts of each other's territory, while Beijing's military build-up along their frontier, as well as competing interests in the South China Sea and Indian Ocean, are frequent sources of friction.

The two sides have held more than a dozen rounds of inconclusive talks to resolve their border disputes, which led to a brief war in 1962.

In a prelude to the decision to invite China to Aero India, they agreed to resume joint military exercises last September following the first visit of a Chinese defense minister to New Delhi in eight years.

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