It is a year since the Chinese president Hu Jintao visited India, and attention to China in this country seems to have slipped into a just-below-the-radar zone. A blip occurred in May this year, when the Chinese denied an IAS officer from Arunachal Pradesh a visa to visit China, putting out the old line that Arunachalis, being Chinese citizens, did not require visas. More serious was Chinese foreign minister Yang Jiechi's statement to the Indian foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee in late May that the "mere" fact of populated areas was insufficient reason for China to give up its territorial claims on Arunachal Pradesh, directly contradicting the terms of the 2005 Indo-Sino agreement.

Despite the Chinese minister's comments, India has kept its cool and its defence minister, A.K. Antony, made little reference to China at the Sixth Asian Security Conference in Singapore in June. A few days later, at the G8 summit, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called China the "greatest neighbour" of India. Meanwhile, the visit of UPA chairman and Congress chief, Sonia Gandhi, to China last month, is part of the process of continuing visits at the highest political level and was notable for being the first by a significant foreign political leader to China, following the conclusion of the 17th Party Congress of the Communist Party of China. Similarly, in another important step, the first annual defence dialogue between the two countries was held in Beijing earlier this month.

However, even as there is much to be commended in India's approach to China- primarily the decision to move beyond the border dispute and engage on other fronts, particularly trade, which is expected to touch $30 billion this year - these political pinpricks show that the mistrust between the two countries persists.

On the trade front, meanwhile, the basket of goods is a cause for worry, with Indian exports dominated by iron ore and other raw materials. Greater trade diversification is imperative. In the military arena, while incursions along the LAC are a mutual affair, there is still a view that while Chinese incursions are far more regular, the Indian response remains both limited and timid. India, it appears, is either unwilling or unable to protest effectively or as often as the Chinese do. While the Chinese have built motorable, often paved, roads up to several points along the LAC, they have protested vigorously at similar Indian attempts.

Meanwhile, the recent turmoil in Myanmar demonstrates that, bilateral issues apart, there are regional issues where the interests of the two countries are found to clash. Unlike bilateral issues where the nature and pace of events might be amenable to a degree of control by the respective governments, events in their common neighbourhood are often beyond any such control and lead more easily to reductionist, usually negative, interpretations of what either country is up to.

The Indian dilemma is evident in its imitation of a posture in Myanmar, that the Chinese had made their own - namely, that of non-interference in the affairs of another country in order to maintain and protect current stakes. At the heart of this dilemma is the Indian lack of confidence and tentativeness vis-a-vis China, whether it is the question of visas to Chinese businessmen or the matter of opening up India's borderlands to greater traffic with China.

The framing of foreign policy certainly cannot be an entirely democratic exercise but the public in both countries cannot be left in the dark. Broadening the constituencies involved in the border negotiations could induce both sides to break out of the security-driven framework of the talks and provide, at the very least, an additional push towards a faster solution, if not an entirely new framework for dispute resolution.

The regular pinpricks in Sino-Indian bilateral relations might be interpreted in two ways. One, that these are normal occurrences in everyday international affairs - a testing of the waters that both sides engage in, to assess the other's reactions. Alternatively, these incidents could arise from serious misunderstandings of each other's positions and raise the question whether the two countries really understand or are willing to understand each other's core concerns. For two countries that are expected to lead the 'Asian century', this is not a healthy state of affairs.

The writer is a research fellow at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies