The leaders of China and India pretend to get along

DRAGON AND tiger, or panda and elephant? As Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, and Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, met for an “informal summit” on October 12th, the masala of metaphors in the Indian press was telling. Strongmen on their own political turf, the two men ambled as tourists through the eighth-century rock carvings of Mamallapuram on India’s south-eastern coast before banqueting at a romantic seaside temple, the last vestige of a once-thriving port that traded with China 1,300 years ago. Yet their countries, jointly home to more than a third of humanity, are not the best of pals.

The list of mutual irritants is long. Each side claims land the other controls. China asserts a right to the entire Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. Both have friends the other hates. China is an increasingly vital financial, military and diplomatic lifeline for India’s eternal, nuclear-armed foe, Pakistan, while India has for decades hosted prominent Tibetan exiles, including the Dalai Lama. China grates at India’s blunt opposition to its Belt and Road Initiative, aimed at integrating Asia through infrastructure built with Chinese loans. India is annoyed by China’s $53bn surplus in the $96bn trade between the two. It shows its disapproval by, among other things, rebuffing Chinese proposals to deepen “people-to-people” contacts, suspecting that the offer of things like research collaboration is just a cover for more insidious aims. For its part, China sends a minuscule 250,000 tourists a year to India, out of some 149m who travel abroad.