India-China Year of Friendship to ‘address info gap thru’ tourism’

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BEIJING, July 9 (PTI): India Sunday said it wanted to bridge the "information gap" in its relations with China by celebrating 2007 as the 'Year of Friendship Through Tourism'.
'The India-China Year of Friendship Through Tourism 2007' is aimed to discover each other, Indian Ambassador to China Nirupama Rao said while sharing her perspectives on Sino-Indian culture and tourism exchange.
Participating in programme on China Central Television's English channel, Rao stressed that since India and China were ancient civilisations and two of the largest countries in Asia with 40 per cent of the world's population between them, there is a need for them to know each other better.
"All said and done, there is some information gap between our two countries although, the acquaintance and friendship in a sense goes back to the time of our ancestors," she said.
"In both our countries, we have the tradition of ancestor worship and I think this is a time to remember the tremendous achievements of our ancestors in forging this time-honoured and time-tested friendship between our two countries. Therefore, tourism is a wonderful way to rediscover that spirit and that's what we are setting out to do," she said.
The two governments are marking 2007 as the 'Year of Friendship Through Tourism'.
During the year, India and China have plans to exchange cultural troupes and organise visits by media.
"Media can play a crucial role in bridging the information gap," Rao, a former spokesperson of the ministry of external affairs, said.
Asked about the current tourism traffic, the ambassador said that the situation was improving, with more and more people travelling.
However, more Indians are travelling to China than Chinese to India, she said citing figures which showed that some 4.5 lakh Indians visited China last year while only 50,000 Chinese visited India during the same period.
"So we need to get more Chinese to visit India. We need to bring that figure up," Rao said.
Asked about her take on bilateral ties, Rao said: "I always describe the relationship between India and China as the tree of life itself. Life encompasses within itself so many dimensions, so does our friendship."
She pointed out that in 2006, when both nations celebrated the year as the India-China Friendship Year, the two sides staged a series of events and high-level visits, including that of Chinese President, Hu Jintao to India.
"All these have led to the cementing and strengthening of bilateral ties," she said.
On the trade front, the Ambassador noted that India-China bilateral trade in 2006 rose to 25 billion US dollars, growing ten-times between 2000 and 2006.
"I believe that there is tremendous excitement on the trade and economic scene and businessmen of both countries are engaging with each other, touching base, the number of visas the Embassy of India in China and the Embassy of China in India are issuing are growing by the day," she said.
"My vision of India-China relations is to see more and more contacts and communications," she said.
"I call it the four Cs. We must start with Communication, from communication we can strengthen cooperation, with cooperation you get Concord or harmony and from that we get peaceful co-existence. These four Cs define our relationship," she said.
During the show, which focussed on 'The India-China Year of Friendship Through Tourism, an Indian yoga instructor was invited to present some of the postures as yoga became popular in China as a 'healthy sport'.
The 45-minute programme also featured a group of young Chinese dancers wearing traditional Indian costumes, performing Indian classical dance, to bringing the true and rich flavour of India to millions of Chinese viewers.