India wants to be 'most beautiful woman' wooed by all, says Chinese media

Beijing: Playing down India’s decision to sign a logistic agreement with the US, Chinese state media on Monday said the proposed deal is stalled because of distrust between the two as India wants to be the “most beautiful woman” wooed by all, especially Washington and Beijing.

“Besides their traditional distrust, the speculation heralding a US-India alliance is also an obvious underestimation of India’s ambition for a role of swing-state between superpowers,” an article in Global Times said as defence minister Manohar Parrikar started his first visit to Beijing.

‘Not unfamiliar a role for India’

The reports comes on the eve of defence minister Manohar Parrikar’s first visit to Beijing for talks with Chinese officials.

“The basic idea is that India would like to continue to be the most beautiful woman wooed by all men, notably the two strongest in the house, US and China,” the article titled ‘Indo-US strategic distrust stalls LSA signing’.

“This is not an unfamiliar role to India. We can still recall how its diplomatic manoeuvring had earned itself a special role between the two competing blocs during the Cold War,” it said.

“Evidently enough, it needs to feel its way forward and try not to agitate China by crossing the bottom line and consequently it declines to discuss the prospect of joint patrols in the South China Sea, despite the obvious interest and much enthusiasm from its American counterpart,” it said.

Last week, US defence secretary Ashton Carter concluded his three-day visit to India and announced he and his Indian counterpart have agreed in-principle that all the issues regarding a Logistics Support Agreement are resolved.