Economic cooperation tends to draw lesser media attention than political issues between China and India. So I was surprised to see dozens of representatives of Chinese companies, both government and private, turn up for a talk by India's Finance Minister Arun Jaitley at a Beijing hotel on Friday.

Jaitley pitched India as a destination to Chinese investors at the forum that was jointly hosted by the Indian embassy and an Indian business lobby group.

The minister was in town over the weekend primarily to attend the first annual meeting of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, a China-initiated lending agency of which India is a founding member.