The leaders of both countries never tire of ruling out rivalry and repeating the ritualistic talk of enough space for both India and China to grow, but such platitudes have not entirely obliterated the trust deficit that dates back to the bruising 1962 war.

More recently, an article attributed to a Chinese strategist - subsequently disowned by the powerful Chinese strategic establishment - exhorted China to balkanize 'Hindu India' into 20-30 independent states, eliciting a sharp reaction from India's external affairs ministry. Coupled with these discordant notes is the growing unease India is feeling with Beijing's calibrated string of pearls strategy of extending its influence among India's neighbours like Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Myanmar.

The resonance of the China threat has another deeper source in the collective Indian middle class psyche that has nothing to do with Beijing's perceived hostility. It is the appeal and power of the China Rising story. China, with its double digit rate of economic growth over last three decades except for this recession-ridden year, has outstripped India in virtually every sphere, be it infrastructure development, poverty eradication, energy security, Olympic golds or cutting-edge areas of science and innovation.

More Indians are travelling abroad now and are familiar with the shining, world-class cities Beijing and Shanghai have morphed into and they can't find a parallel nearer home. One has only to compare the ruthless efficiency and panache with which Beijing hosted the 2008 Olympics with the kind of panic that has gripped India months before the Commonwealth Games 2010 to understand why the China threat stirs the great Indian middle class.

But the threat, as the Chinese character for that word suggests, also represents an opportunity. Instead of being intimidated, India should seize the hour and seize the day (in Chairman Mao's famous words) to revive and sustain its economic growth, bolster its woefully inadequate infrastructure and transform this country with over five hundred million poor into a developed country in the next decade or so.

The deadline for China threat is 2020, the defining year Beijing has set to mark its entry into the developed world. If India's rulers are still posturing by that time and not addressing all too real issues of development and equity, then the threat has a potential to turn real, albeit not necessarily in the sense of a military confrontation.

(23-09-2009- Manish Chand is a writer on diplomatic affairs. He can be contacted at manish.c@ians.in)