A massive earthquake in China cut short the BRIC summit (India, Brazil, China, Russia) as Hu returned to Beijing right after the meeting. However, Hu and Singh spent the better part of an hour on Thursday morning discussing bilateral matters and took a brief, grand sweep of global issues like climate change and trade.

Singh introduced NSA Shivshankar Menon as the new special representative for boundary talks with China. Chinese special envoy Dai Bingguo, also a state councillor, accompanied Hu during the talks along with foreign minister Yang Jiechi. Singh had Menon and commerce minister Anand Sharma by his side. The 13th round of boundary talks was held in Delhi in 2009, and the next round is scheduled for later this year.

Thursday's meeting avoided the difficult issues and concentrated more on the feel-good factors. India has assiduously maintained a steady stream of high level contacts with the Chinese leadership, so even though Singh was meeting Hu after 10 months, he's had meetings with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, both at Hua Hin and Copenhagen, while foreign minister S M Krishna was in Beijing only last month. President Pratibha Patil is expected to be in China next month.

Hu started off by apologising to Singh that he was responsible for speeding up the summit. Singh offered condolences for the huge loss of life and offered all assistance that China may want for relief. "As your government rallies to the assistance of the injured and displaced, I want to assure you we stand ready to render any assistance you or your government may require of us," Singh said.

Hu said he now "subscribed to the PM's view that the world was big enough to accommodate the aspirations of India and China". Given that relations between the two have improved dramatically after Copenhagen, both countries are now looking at more coordination on climate change, Doha round and terrorism.