On 21 May, China’s new premier, Li Keqiang met with Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, in his first official overseas visit to Delhi. A pledge was made to reach $100 billion in bilateral trade by 2015. Meanwhile, both sides have recently pulled back troops along their border areas, which have been disputed since a brief war in 1962.

A Chinese governmental spokesperson said the visit offered ‘a fresh strategic perspective’ for China-India relations. Two days after the meeting, the official Chinese Communist Party newspaper, People’s Daily, declared that the visit had provided lessons for the region on ‘how to realise the Asian Century’.

The strengthening of this bilateral relationship may cause some concern in the rest of the world, especially in Europe and North America. Regardless of actual economic accuracy, China and India are still widely viewed as economic competition, or even threats, especially in light of the 2008 financial crisis.

The 2012 US presidential election highlighted China as a central concern for leaders of the global north. Romney used Obama’s supposed weakness with China on trade and currency issues as a focal attacking point. Obama maintained that he didn’t see the relationship as zero-sum, but did not hesitate to frame China as a competitor. During the third presidential debate, for example, in October 2012, he criticised Romney’s tax policies, by saying that they would have led to job creation ‘in places like China’, and he defended the auto-industry bailout by saying without it, the US would be ‘buying cars from China instead of selling cars to China.’

Here in the UK, David Cameron appears focused on making Britain as business-friendly as possible. He recently said to a group of editors from Time Inc. that he was ‘not embarrassed’ that Chinese and Indian investors owned portions of British companies. Regarding India’s Tata Motors reviving Britain’s auto industry, Cameron said: ‘Far from being embarrassed… every time you come to London feel free to come through the door of Downing Street, come have a cup of tea with me and let’s talk about the British economy and how you can expand into even more of it.’

But the very fact that Cameron needs to tell newspaper editors that he is not “embarrassed” indicates the prevailing public perception about the rise of India and China. Gordon Brown seems to have realistically set the tone when he said: ‘with the growing competition from China and India, having the best-educated, best-skilled and best-trained workforce in the world is not for Britain an option in a global economy, but a necessity.’

The fact remains that although China and India are indeed economies on the rise, rhetoric such as the “Asian Century” need not be perceived as a threat to take over the world. A 2010 Economist article, ‘The dangers of a rising China’, showcases this kind of perception perfectly. Although the article itself argued that China need not be an antagonist, these sorts of headlines are becoming ubiquitous enough that perception may shape policy, for example in the demands voters place on their candidates. This is almost reminiscent of Cold War discourse, where the rise of another power was synonymous with the rise of an enemy. But unlike the Soviet Union, neither China nor India has anything to gain from the downfall of the global north, or a collapse of the international economy.

Certainly, the relative strength of rising economies, especially China, has been fortified by the 2008 financial crisis. But this has been caused by the relative demise of American and European power as much as the actual rise of competitors. Much of this may once again come down to perception, due to the recession and the consecutive Euro-crises. But last year China’s contribution to world GDP was still less than half of either the USA’s or the EU’s.

The formation of new alliances is perhaps what causes the most concern. In March, China’s new president, Xi Jinping, made his first foreign visits to Russia, Tanzania, South Africa, and the Republic of Congo. This and Li Keqiang’s visit to India no doubt give a clear indication of where China’s primary economic concerns seem to lie.

But this can hardly be a surprise. One of the main lessons China drew from the financial crisis was the dangers of the risk it took in not diversifying investments more. The current debtor-creditor relationship between China and the US, although somewhat stable due to mutual interests in its maintenance, also has the potential to wreak havoc.

Furthermore, China-India relations are arguably not yet very firm. As the BBC reports, China’s share of India’s trade is less than 9%, and India’s share in China is less than 2%. Even the pledged $100 billion will not come close to correcting this imbalance, although it should begin to increase the volume of trade. Most importantly, the rest of the world should not be too concerned about an imminently rising dynamic duo - a recent opinion poll suggests that more than four-fifths of Indians consider China a threat, and three-quarters want closer ties with the US.

As the world remains mired in the aftermath of 2008, it would arguably be more helpful if we stopped thinking about rising economies as threatening to catch up. Growth as poverty alleviation should be a welcome development to all. Furthermore, our rhetoric needs to display less zero-sum attitude. Threats may sell newspapers, but the global economy since 2008 will need considerable reshaping, and this cannot be done in a constructive way, with all the necessary parties involved, if we are too busy shielding ourselves from a threat that we do not even fully understand.