Accompanied by a 120-member trade delegation, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao is expected to give new directions to boost bilateral economic and cultural ties with India during his four-day visit from Saturday.

An assortment of companies from large players like telecom major ZTE, Sino Steel, Huawei and Dalian Shide to small and medium firms will be represented in the delegation coming here to primarily explore trade opportunities.

"The Chinese companies are seriously looking both for complementarity and investment opportunities. They view this as an opportunity to understand each other's potential better," said Sunil Kumar Misra, who heads the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) East Asia representative office in Shanghai.

"During his visit, the Chinese premier is expected to give direction on a variety of activities and initiate steps that will increase people to people and business contacts," Misra told IANS.

Some of the initiatives expected include better air connectivity to promote both business and leisure travel, and more cultural and student exchange programmes.

"These are expected to help in reducing the knowledge gap that currently exists," said Misra.

Though the bilateral trade between India and China has grown by leaps from around $1 billion a decade back to $13.6 billion in 2004-05, up 79.1 percent from the previous year, Misra feels there is still considerable information gap that needs to be bridged.

Last five years has seen exchange of several delegations on both sides. In 2003, CII opened its office in Shanghai with a representative office in Beijing. This has helped to catalyse more exchange of visits.

Last year while six Indian delegations visited China, double that number came from the other side. In fact, the India-China Business Conclave held here saw participation by a 105-strong Chinese team.

In October, the CII is planning to hold a repeat of its successful Made In India show at Beijing.

"Indian investment is flowing into China as it is flowing into other countries. Success overseas has made Indian industry much more confident now, and it is taking on challenge of external industries," said Misra.

The growing bilateral trade between the two countries is seeing China sourcing more machinery, auto parts, engineering goods besides iron ore and steel from India, while Indian industry too is switching from the West to Chinese products in areas where the price and quality are competitive.

This includes machinery, capital goods, textiles and chemicals.

Despite the robust growth in bilateral trade, Misra maintains there is considerable room for improvement including expansion of the export basket on both sides.

"Considering that together we are looking at a 2.5 billion strong market, the vision should be such that in the next 15 years we should be able to reach a target of $100 billion. Things have been picking up slowly as we do not understand each other," said Misra.

If people in India are still not aware about China beyond Beijing, Shanghai, Tiananmen Square, the Great Wall and Shenzhen, most Chinese too know little about India beyond New Delhi, Mumbai, Bollywood, Taj Mahal and Indian IT expertise, given that two major companies NIIT and Aptech have opened scores of training institutes there.

But things are changing as the presence in China of several major Indian companies like Ranbaxy, Infosys, Aditya Birla Group, Orind Industry, Sundaram Fastners and Wipro would vouch.

The Chinese market is proving so lucrative that Indian companies are stepping up expansion plans while several others have opened representative offices in China to know and explore the market.

-Indo-Asian News Service