China has managed to present a surprisingly more friendly and forward-looking face than the US at an Asia Society conference in New Delhi, where the theme was "India – Powering Asia's Ascent." The US might have been expected to be the cheerleader for such a theme, but it was Victor Zhikai Gao, a westernized Beijing adviser, who enthusiastically called for China and India to see their disputed Himalayan mountain border "not as an insurmountable barrier" but as a "bridge linking these two ancient civilizations together, for mutual benefit, and for mutual enrichment" – while a senior US official merely recited a years-old list of economic reforms that American business wants India to implement.