Beijing: India today (Sep 13, 2004) said that it does not view China's giant leap forward will hurt its own development as New Delhi felt that the sustained growth of the two Asian giants constituted a 'win-win' situation for both and not a 'zero sum game'.

"The basic point is that India and China constitute a win-win situation and the view is that the two countries can combine in the growth model," Secretary, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, Ministry of Commerce, Ashok Jha said in Beijing.

"It is not really a competitive environment - both in trade areas as well as in economic cooperation," Jha, who was the Special Guest at a session on India and China at the 'China Summit 2004' of the World Economic Forum (WEF).

He noted that a number of Indian companies have set up operations in China and similarly many Chinese firms have started businesses in India, laying the foundation for greater bilateral economic cooperation.

"So the notion that this is a zero-sum-game that one (country) will develop at the cost of the other is not true," Jha told sources at the end of the WEF working breakfast session, "India-China: Blueprint for a win-win relationship", which was not open to the media.

At the ongoing session of WEF, many experts highlighted the fast paced economic development in China and India and predicted that the two countries, which had more than one-third of the global population, will become the major engines of growth for the global economy.

The WEF noted that India, as a global back office, and China, as the factory of the world, are popular clinches. The reality is that the potential for these two countries to create new business opportunities and synergies is huge.

The session on India-China looked into whether the two Asian giants can combine their economic synergies and whether their future relations be built more on trade than geopolitics.

The session also looked into whether India-China relationship can change the region, official sources said.

The Indian side highlighted the positive momentum in India-China bilateral trade and economic cooperation and the shared belief that continued expansion and intensification of bilateral economic cooperation is mutually beneficial.

"We are seeking ways to fully utilise the potential and opportunities arising from our complementarities and are taking measures to expand trade and economic cooperation," the sources noted while pointing out to the surging trade figure, which is expected to cross a record ten billion US dollar mark this year.