Chinese President Xi Jinping, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President of the United States Barack Obama came together for a heady week of negotiations, multi billion dollar deals, photo ops with business and technology leaders and bids to seal the growth of their nations.
As each economy carefully hinges on that of the other, both Mr. Modi and Mr. Xi coaxed larger investments from the worlds richest democracy in exchange for a small piece of the pie that America always wanted – better transparency, a curb on corruption, protection of intellectual property rights, climate change enforcement’s and opening up their economies further.
While meetings hussled around the UN general assembly, Modi and Xi both received accolades for their work in American Media. China having a larger economy and much higher trade targets than India, found herself on more front pages than Mr. Modi who is holding on tightly to the sheen of his India shining. India and the US are hoping to increase bilateral trade to US$500 billion in the next few years from the current US$120 billion. China’s bilateral trade with the US is already around the US$500 billion mark.
The idea was for each megalomaniac leader to drum up investments and create an international stir to drive their economy forward. For Modi this 2nd trip to the US was a whirlwind affair braced at pushing his “Made in India” campaign tweaked at increasing India’s manufacturing sector which will hopefully absorb the millions leaving agrarian land and graduating by 2020. For Xi, this was his first state visit to the US, marked by a lavish state dinner hosted by US President Barack Obama at the White House.
His statement was to boost the Chinese economy with the higher value goods, services and American expertise. In addition to hob-nobbing with leaders in Washington, Xi visited Seattle and Modi Silicon Valley. Xi began his week-long visit in Seattle addressing a gathering of 650 business executives, while Modi chose New York to kick off his five-day visit, addressing two round tables—one of financial investors and another with representatives of media and communication companies including Comcast, Time Warner, Discovery, Sony, ESPN, News Corp., 21st Century Fox, Disney and the ABC television group.
Read more