国内英语新闻:Commentary: Dragon-Elephant rivalry merely Western media's one-sided hype

BEIJING, May 25 (Xinhua) -- Hailing China as one of India's most important partners, Indian President Pranab Mukherjee landed in Beijing on Wednesday for his first state visit to China, beginning a new dance between the Elephant and the Dragon.

The visit, which follows Chinese President Xi Jinping's India trip two years ago, is set to open a new chapter in the development of bilateral relations and yield meaningful results for regional peace and stability.

But some Western media have attempted to drive a wedge into China-India relations by hyping up competition between the two Asian giants.

One of the latest targets of their smear campaign is a New Delhi-Tehran deal on developing Iran's southern port of Chabahar. The seaport is about 100 km from Pakistan's Gwadar seaport, which is co-developed by China. Those media claim the Elephant-Dragon rivalry is unavoidable.

Such hype is both untrue and harmful.

China and India do have differences, but those differences are outnumbered and dwarfed by their consensuses and aspiration for win-win cooperation.

In an interview with Delhi-based Chinese journalists on the eve of his trip, Mukherjee said that in the past decades, India and China have witnessed "uNPRecedented expansion and diversification of bilateral relationship."

"Our Closer Development Partnership is broad-based and covers the political, security, economic, educational and cultural fields. Both countries have established a range of mechanisms in all areas of cooperation," said the president.

In fact, the first 14 years of the 21st century witnessed a 23-fold-increase in the trade volume between the two partners. With frequent exchanges among their top leaders, the two neighbors have successfully developed deep mutual trust and profound common interests.

The two sides have reached consensus even on their thorniest issue -- the border dispute. India seeks a "fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable settlement of the question," and China is committed to working with India to accelerate the negotiation and solve the issue at an early date.

The two countries have established a number of boundary-related mechanisms, including the Special Representatives' Meeting on China-India Boundary Question, whose 19th round was held in Beijing last month.

The common interests and interdependence between China and India are deep and close, and robust enough to withstand the onslaught of those ill-intentioned Western media.

Yet the distorted coverage of China-India ties lays bare a deep and unfounded bias against China among Western media. Some just cannot wait to label any nation that has competition with Beijing as China's rival. Such confrontation-addicted reporting speaks volumes for their untold intentions.

For the sake of global peace and stability, it is high time that those irresponsible Western media stopped starting fires and stoking flames and began to cover today's world, particularly those leading developing countries, without tinted glasses and a hidden agenda.