This will be Singh’s first-ever visit there after the change of leadership.

One of the key things that might emerge as a successful outcome of the visit is the much-awaited land border agreement, which China is too keen to sign before India heads for the elections next year, senior MEA officials told Business Standard.

“The groundwork has already been made on the proposed Border Defense Cooperation Agreement. Under it, mainly, both sides will agree not to do any construction work along the border. Some positive movement is there,” a senior official of ministry of external affairs told Business Standard on confidentiality.

This agreement assumes critical importance in the wake of recent spate of military face-off incidents and alleged incursions by Chinese troops along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the Ladakh region.

Gautam Bambawale, joint secretary, MEA is already in Beijing to firm up the PM’s agenda. In December, India is going to appoint Ashok K Kantha, who is presently secretary (east) in MEA, as its next envoy to China.

On the economic front, PM is going to strongly raise the issue of greater penetration of Indian IT and pharmaceutical companies into China and also the problem of burgeoning trade deficit.

“This is high time PM moves on from Beijing and visits some of their business districts such as Shanghai and address the business community there and encourage them to invest here while allowing Indian companies to operate there,” said Mohammed Saqib, secretary general, India-China Economic and Cultural Council.

India faces a humongous trade deficit with China as a result of which the government is pushing China to source more products from here. In 2012-13 India suffered a historic trade deficit of $40.78 billion with China compared to $39.40 billion in 2011-12 and $27.95 billion in 2010-11, according to ministry of commerce and industry data.

During the visit of Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang to India in May, both sides agreed to increase two-way trade to $100 billion from $68 billion presently.

“Indian companies present there are not getting orders from the state owned companies. It has become a huge issue for us,” said an official from Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI).

Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) account for a large amount of public procurement and therefore PM Singh is likely to urge the Chinese government to take a policy view of allocating a portion of this procurement for India.

“Getting access to the Chinese market has become very difficult. But this can be solved if India allows investment-led trade with China, which it wants. We have to remove restrictions on bringing Chinese labourers here and allow more Chinese investments to take place,” said Biswajit Dhar of Delhi-based think tank RIS.

Recently, under the aegis of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Indian and Chinese SMEs signed deals worth $338 million across a wide range of sectors.

India has, apparently, identified a list of 916 items of interest to be traded with China. This was discussed during the joint working group meeting held in Beijing in March this year.

Both leaders are also going to discuss trans-border river issues. This matter was raised by PM with the Chinese President when they met for the first time on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit in Durban in March. Singh had expressed serious concerns over the Chinese proposal to construct three dams across Brahmaputra.

PM Singh and President Xi are going to discuss the proposed BRICS Development Bank and local currency trading to decrease it dependence on dollar.

Both sides are also expected to discuss the joint collaboration in creating the BCIM (Bangladesh, China, India and Myanmar) Economic Corridor.

This will be PM’s third meeting with President Xi. Both leaders had last met on the sidelines of the G20 meet in Russia where leaders from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa agreed to set up a $100 billion fund currency reserve fund.

This is going to be PM’s last visit to China before elections.