Chinese Premier Li Keqiang conveyed to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during their meeting on Sunday that he wanted his three-day visit to India to “show the whole world” that India-China relations were improving, to dispel doubts about persisting differences between the two countries.

The State-run Xinhua news agency in an account of the meeting issued in Beijing early on Monday morning quoted Mr. Li as saying during his hour-long interaction with Dr. Singh that he believed both countries had the “will, wisdom and capacity” to boost strategic ties and to make India and China "the new engines" of the world economy.

“I want this visit to show the whole world that the mutual political trust between China and India is rising, practical cooperation is expanding and there are more common interests than differences,” Mr. Li said.

Their hour-long talks will be followed by delegation-level meetings in New Delhi on Monday. Indian officials had said on Sunday that Dr. Singh had raised, during a frank exchange with Mr. Li, the recent stand-off along the Line of Actual Control in Depsang, stressing that overall ties could not develop if incidents such as the incursion in Ladakh took place. The Chinese leader, for his part, raised concerns over the activities of Tibetan exiled groups in India.

The Xinhua report neither directly mentioned the Ladakh stand-off nor Mr. Li’s comments on Tibet. It only quoted Dr. Singh as saying India was “ready to work with China” to “manage and control border disputes”.

Separately on Monday, the Communist Party-run Global Times newspaper in an editorial said it viewed boundary issues with India as “much better than the Diaoyu Islands disputes and some other dispute islands in the South China Sea”. China and Japan have recently sparred over the disputed Diaoyu or Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, while China’s claims on the South China Sea have stirred tensions with a number of countries who have competing claims.

The newspaper acknowledged that China needed to do more to boost ties with India, including in terms of public diplomacy to improve perceptions. “Chinese people lack understanding and respect toward India. They tend to judge it according to ill-conceived preconceptions,” the editorial said.

“Previously, China’s efforts to promote ties with India were less obvious than the U.S.” “However,” it added, “China’s surrounding environment will suffer if India, a country which has the prospect of running neck-and-neck with China, becomes another Japan or Philippines in terms of its policies toward China.”

It called on both governments to “bear the primary responsibility” of improving ties “to counter media hype”. “Grumbling about media coverage doesn’t help. Governments should also play a role in guiding public opinion,” the editorial said.

Echoing Mr. Li’s comments on Sunday, the newspaper said India and China had “common interests on major issues such as the global financial order and climate change, which means that the two countries must seek cooperation”. “China and India’s combined potential are large enough to make the West anxious,” the editorial said. “Internal dissension between China and India meets Western interests”.

Following talks in New Delhi on Monday, Mr. Li, accompanied by a 100-member business delegation, will travel to Mumbai on Tuesday. The Premier will then head to Pakistan, Switzerland and Germany on a nine-day tour, which is his first overseas visit.

Chinese analysts said on Monday that his visit will reflect China’s diplomatic balancing act of taking forward ties with India while, at the same time, consolidating its special “all-weather” relationship with long-term strategic ally Pakistan.

“Both India and Pakistan serve different yet important roles in China’s diplomatic relations,” Sun Shihai, vice-director of the Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies at the official Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times.

“India is a key player in maintaining the safety of maritime channels on the Indian Ocean, which is crucial to China’s trade with the Middle East and Africa. Pakistan, on the other hand, can cast great influence on other Islamic countries like Afghanistan and serves as a bridge between China and the Middle East”.

India has expressed concern over certain aspects of China-Pakistan ties, specifically, the ongoing nuclear cooperation and Chinese projects in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

Fu Xiaoqiang, a South Asia scholar at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations in Beijing, added to the Global Times that it was “against China’s fundamental interests to see conflicts break out between India and Pakistan”.