By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.
WASHINGTON: When Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh meets with President Obama at the White House this Friday, the rise of China may not be on the official agenda, but it will be on everybody’s mind – and Beijing will be watching warily.
Friday’s meeting will be just the latest in a series of summits that began with George W. Bush– whose first term, not coincidentally, started with a pre-9/11 crisis over China’s downing of a US Navy spy plane (PDF) off Hainan. Relations have kept getting closer ever since the Bush administration elevated India to the ranks of our most important allies. India has been the world’s biggest arms importer for the last four years in a row, and the value of its purchases from the US has soared since their nadir of zero in 2004-2005, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI.
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