Mr Shyam Saran, distinguished diplomat and former foreign secretary, delivering the Second Annual K Subrahmanyam Memorial lecture on August 29, 2012 presented an intersting analysis of what India should know about China's world view in the 21st century. Text of his speech is given below.
China in the Twenty-First Century:
What
India Needs to Know About China’s World View
Shyam Saran
Respected
Ambassador Rasgotra, respected Shrimati Subrahmanayam, Chairman, Global India
Foundation, Vice-Admiral Jacob,Vice-Chairman, Ambassador Salman Haider, Member
Secretary, Shri O.P. Mishra, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen. Thank
you, Ambassador Rasgotra for chairing this memorial lecture. I am honoured by
the presence of one of my most respected peers.
I consider it a
privilege to have been invited to deliver the Second Annual K. Subrahmanyam
Memorial Lecture, which gives me an opportunity to pay homage to the memory of
a distinguished public servant, a meticulous scholar and one of India’s great
strategic thinkers. I thank Global India Foundation and its President, Shri
O.P. Mishra, for according me this privilege. My own engagement with Shri
Subrahmanyam goes back to 1979 when I met him on the eve of my travel to Geneva
as a UN Disarmament Fellow, on the advice of another very distinguished
diplomat, the late M.A. Vellodi. I recall Secretary Vellodi telling me that
there was no better informed and knowledgeable person in India who could acquaint
me with the intricacies of disarmament and international security and India’s
own positioning in this domain.
This began a
process of education at the feet of an extraordinary individual, off and on,
over the next three decades. There are scores of people like me who have
imbibed a sense of India’s geopolitical role, it’s strategic compulsions and
opportunities and, above all, the need to undertake dispassionate and rigorous
analysis of issues, though I am not certain how many of us would measure up to
his high standards.
Nevertheless, I feel
emboldened today to offer you some ideas on a subject that he was convinced,
would remain a major preoccupation for India in the decades to come, the
challenge of an ascendant China. Much of what I will say is drawn from my own
experience of China, an abiding fascination with its unique civilization and a
deep respect for its philosophical and cultural heritage. My justification for
indulging in this rather broad sweep analysis is that managing the China
challenge requires a much deeper understanding of the nature of Chinese
civilization, its cultural particularities and the worldview of its people,
formed layer upon layer, over five thousand years of unbroken though sometimes
tumultuous history.
China is
undergoing a dramatic transformation and its traditional culture and ways of
thinking can no longer be sourced only to persistent templates derived from the
past. One has to only look at how modern, digital culture has pervaded Chinese
society, in particular, its youth, to be cautious in making judgments about the
country’s view of itself. Nevertheless, there are certain deeply rooted
elements that shape China’s psyche and its world view that are worth careful
reflection, including where India fits into that broad consciousness. At
various points, I will also try and contrast Chinese and Indian cultural and
philosophical traits, so that one is better prepared in adjusting one’s own
template in judging Chinese behaviour.
If there is one
singular and unique feature of Chinese civilization that distinguishes it from
other major civilizations, it is the use of Chinese ideograms and characters,
that survive with few changes to this day, since they first appeared on oracle
bones, some three thousand five hundred years or more ago, during the ancient
Shang dynasty. Chinese language has no alphabet. Each character is a word in
itself and a decent vocabulary requires memorizing at least three thousand
characters. A scholar may aspire to a vocabulary of five thousand. “Classical
Chinese”, in the words of one scholar, Peter Hessler, the author of Oracle
Bones, “connected people over space and time”. “It provided a powerful element
of unity to an empire that, from another perspective, was a mish-mash of ethnic
groups and languages”. After I had learnt Mandarin in Hong
Kong in the early 1970s, I would often communicate with the
local Cantonese using my new found knowledge of Chinese characters, because my
Mandarin was as unintelligible to them as their Cantonese dialect was to me.
What is to be
appreciated in this context is the importance of the written word in Chinese
culture and the transformation of Chinese ideograms into an essential element
in Chinese aesthetics. Calligraphy is a much admired accomplishment and
characters appear as an integral component in paintings as well as Chinese
pottery.
Contrast this
with Indian culture, where the spoken word is pre-eminent. The ancient Vedas
were heard as “Srutis” and were then remembered as “Smritis”. The written word
came much later. Mantras get energized only when they are recited in the
correct rhythm and tone. Beauty is imparted and sought through arrangements of
sound; imagery is not of the same order. To an Indian, Chinese music sounds
stilted and archaic, while Indian classical music is a breathtaking mastery of
seven notes and several microtones in between, forever reinventing itself. It
is for this reason that I consider Chinese to be a predominantly visual
culture, a legacy of the ancient ideogram, while India’s is a predominantly
aural culture, where spoken word, the musical note, the sacred mantra, were to
become the defining characteristics of the culture. This difference in
civilizational trajectory has its impact on how our two cultures perceive the
world around us and interact with one another. The emphasis on the written word
led to an immense treasury of historical documentation in China.
The Chinese
pilgrims, Fa Xian and Xuan Zhuang left elaborate records of their journeys to India and its great universities of Taxila, Nalanda
and Vikramshila. In contrast, while it is estimated that the beginning of the 6th
century A.D., the number of Indian Buddhist monks and teachers in China were
upwards of three thousand, no accounts of China, as they perceived their
adopted country, have surfaced so far. Only some legends survive in temples
associated with the more famous among them, such as the Shaolin temple linked
with the Zen master, Bodhidhama and the Fei Lai Feng temple, or the Peak that
Flew Over, located in Hangzhou,
associated with the Buddhist monk, known only by his Chinese name, Huili. Huili
came from Rajgir and chose the location of his temple at the foot of a peak
that resembled Gridhkuta in his native town. Hence the Peak that Flew Over.
The great value
attached to the written word, bound as it has been with Chinese aesthetics and
the thought process of a complex culture, has combined with an enormous and
detailed historical record to provide a contemporary reference point and
multi-faceted prism through which the world is perceived. Even to this day much
of Chinese discourse is conducted
through historical analogies, some of which are explicit and well known. Some
are artfully coded and the language lends itself easily to innuendo and
ambiguity. The contrast with India will be apparent where history is often a
distraction.
In Chinese
diplomatic behavior, this cultural particularity poses unusual challenges to
any interlocutor or negotiator. The Chinese will insistently demand and
sometimes obtain explicit formulations from friend and adversary alike on
issues of importance to their interests, but will rarely concede clarity and
finality in formulations reflecting the other side’s interests. Thus, there is
the recurring demand that India reaffirm, time and again, its recognition of
Chinese sovereignty over Tibet. In 2003,
during PM Vajpayee’s visit, China conceded Sikkim as a part of India but this
was not explicitly recorded in a written formulation. In 2005, during Wen
Jiabao’s visit to India, China went a step further and handed over maps of
China, showing Sikkim as part of India. Recently, some Chinese scholars have
pointed out that the absence of an official statement recognizing Indian
sovereignty leaves the door open to subsequent shifts if necessary.
I also recall
seeing the record of conversation between R.K. Nehru and Chinese Premier Zhou
en-lai in 1962, some months before the border war erupted in October that year.
R.K. Nehru drew attention to reports that China was leaning towards the
Pakistani position that Jammu and Kashmir was disputed territory. He recalled
to Zhou an earlier conversation, where when asked whether China accepted Indian
sovereignty over J&K, he had said, rhetorically- Has China ever said that
it does not accept Indian sovereignty over J&K, or words to that effect. At
this latest encounter, Zhou turned the same formulation on its head, to ask,
Has China ever said that India has sovereignty over J&K?
Much of the
misunderstanding and lack of communication that has characterized India-China
relations may be sourced to the failure on India’s part to be conversant with
Chinese thought processes. It is easy to accuse the Chinese of betrayal, as
Nehru did after the 1962 war, but a clear awareness that deception is, after
all, an integral element of Chinese strategic culture, may have spared us much
angst in the past. Such awareness should certainly be part of our confronting
the China challenge in the future.
Deception, let
me add, is not unique to Chinese strategic thinking. The Mahabharata has
examples of its efficacy and Chanakya is an ardent enthusiast. But in China it
is accorded a value much more significant than in other cultures. I think many
in this well-informed audience may be familiar with the Chinese classic, The
Romance of the three Kingdoms, and the oft-quoted “Ruse of the Empty City”, depicted
therein, which is a favourite part of Chinese lore. This was resorted to by the
famous Shu Kingdom general Zhuge Liang. The general was in danger of being
besieged and over-run at the fortress city of Xicheng by the Wei army, while
his main forces were located a long distance away. Zhuge Liang ordered all the
city gates to be opened and asked his soldiers to don the clothes of ordinary
householders, going about their normal activities, while he parked himself on
top of one of the city gates, calmly playing the Chinese string instrument, the
Qin.
The Wei general, Sima Yi, confronted with this strange spectacle,
suspected that he would run into an ambush as soon as he entered the city gates
and withdrew. And the day was saved for Shu. Zhu Geliang is credited with the
observation that to win a war, it was necessary to steal into the mind of one’s
enemy, observe his thought processes, and then fashion the appropriate
strategy. There is no moral or ethical dimension attached to deception and the
Chinese would find it odd being accused of “betrayal”, in particular, if the
strategy of deception had worked. What
is required from our strategists and diplomats is to understand this important
instrument in the Chinese strategic tool-box and learn to deal with it
effectively. Perhaps we should take to
heart Zhuge Liang’s advice and enter the mind of our Chinese interlocutor to
judge his mental and psychological construct.
Another
important feature of Chinese thinking is what I would call, “Contextualizing”. Significant decisions and actions must always
be located in a broad assessment of political, economic, social and even
psychological factors that constitute the stage setting for the proposed activity. This lends an inherent prudence to Chinese
strategic thinking, but once events have brewed to the right mix and the timing
is right, action must be swift and decisive.
The Chinese strategist may wish to avoid war, if such a war carries
inordinate risk. However, the use of force is an essential and accepted part of
pursuing national interests and war is not necessarily an unmitigated
evil. The Indian attitude towards the
use of force and the dangers of war is more ambiguous. The use of force is often seen as a failure
of diplomacy not an extension of it. And
this is an important difference between the two countries. The conversations
between Nehru and Mao in 1956 on the nature of war reflects this clearly.
Let me try and
illustrate this by examining some of the events leading up to the 1962 border
war. In January 2005, Chinese TV
broadcast a documentary entitled “The Secret History of the China-India
War”. This documentary is important for
two reasons. It painstakingly spells out
the domestic, regional and international context within which the decision to
launch the attack against Indian border forces was taken. It refers to the hesitation within certain
sections of the party leadership to “make an enemy out of India”, at a time
when China was still recovering from the ravages of famine and the disastrous consequences of the
1958-61 Great Leap Froward. The
international situation was also not judged to be favourable. The ideological conflict with the Soviet
Union, the commentary says, had now
become a state to state conflict as well.
The United States continued with its hostile policies towards China and
the Chiang regime in Taiwan was becoming more aggressive. This is an example of
the “contextualizing” approach. This probably corresponded to the assessment of
Chinese posture on the Indian side; briefly, that while border skirmishes would
continue, China was unlikely to engage in a full-scale war.
However, from
summer of 1962, the “context” had begun to change and the clues to this change
were missed by the Indian side. After
having retreated to the “second line of leadership” in the wake of the failure
of the Great Leap Forward, Mao plotted his return to absolute leadership, using
the PLA with the new Defence Minister Lin Piao, who had replaced Marshal Peng
Tehuai, as an ally. The TV documentary points to differences of opinion within
the Party leadership on the border issue. This, it said, was settled by the
denunciation of those who counseled restraint, as “right opportunists”. While
having temporarily ceded the administration of the Party and the Government to
other veteran leaders like Liu Shaoqi and Peng Zhen, Mao appears to have taken
charge of issuing directives to the PLA personally, on handling border tensions
with India. It was he who decided in August 1962, to engage in a full scale
military assault on Indian forces, and to “liquidate the invading Indian army”.
But this was done only after his commanders had reported that the Indian side
simply had neither the numbers nor the equipment to withstand a Chinese attack,
particularly if the attack was of an unexpected scale. On the international
front, too, there was a window of opportunity, mitigating some of the
constraints cited earlier.
In June, 1962,
the Chinese ambassador, Wang Bingnan had enquired from his U.S. counterpart in
Warsaw whether the U.S. would take advantage of India-China border tensions, to
encourage a Taiwanese attack on the mainland. He obtained a categorical
assurance which he claims, in his memoirs, played a big role in the decision to
go to war with India. Thanks to the impending Cuban missile crisis, the then
Soviet Union sought Chinese support by conveying its intention to side with
China in the border conflict with India. China may not have known about the
looming US-Soviet crisis, but it certainly profited from the Soviet change of
heart, temporary though this proved to be. Perhaps it is too much to expect
that Indian decision makers would have connected these dots together, but that
is precisely what is necessary in dealing with China.
The other example
of the importance of contextualizing may be seen through a contrary example. In
1971, during the Bangladesh war, US and China were allies supporting Pakistan.
Kissinger tried to persuade the Chinese to attack India along the Sino-Indian
border as a means of relieving pressure on their common ally, Pakistan. In the
papers of Alexander Haig, who was White House Chief of Staff at the time, it is
reported that he did receive a formal reply from the Chinese side, conveying
that China had decided not to move troops to the Sino-Indian border. On can
confidently surmise that the constraining ‘context’ in this regard was the
Indo-Soviet treaty of 1971.
Lest anyone
believes that Chinese strategists always get things right, I would like to
recall what happened in 1986 during the Wangdung Incident in the Eastern
sector. In 1985, China began to signal that the so-called “package proposal”
for resolving the border issue, essentially legitimizing the post-1962 status
quo, was no longer on offer. In official talks, Chinese officials stated
explicitly for the first time that since the disputed area in the Eastern
sector was much larger than in the Western sector, India would have to make
significant concessions in that sector and China would reciprocate with
appropriate concessions (unspecified) in the West. It was also conveyed to us
that at a minimum, Tawang would have to be transferred to the Chinese side.
When we pointed out that just 3 years back in 1982 Deng Xiaoping had himself spelt
out the package proposal as we had hitherto understood it, the response was
that we may have read too much into his words.
The shift could have been
related to a greater level of confidence following China’s rapid growth and the
fact that a young and as yet untested Prime Minister had taken office in Delhi.
This was followed by the discovery in the summer of 1986 that the Chinese had
crossed the Thagla Ridge and occupied a feature called Le, built permanent
barracks as well as a helipad.
In my view this
was in some way linked to the hardening of the Chinese position on the border
and the new insistence on India making concessions in the Eastern sector. I
recall accompanying Ambassador K.P.S. Menon to lodge a protest with the then
Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister and being witness to a most undiplomatic,
offensive and vituperative harangue by the latter. He claimed that China was,
of course, on its own territory, that it was only “strengthening border
management” after the neglect of recent years and that India would be prudent
not to over-react . Soon thereafter I was transferred from Beijing to Tokyo,
but en route in Delhi I attended a strategy session called to discuss our
counter moves. There was, I admit, a reluctance to take any military counter
measures. However a couple of weeks later I learnt that the then Army Chief,
Sundarji, had airlifted troops and occupied the parallel ridge, known by the
peaks Lurongla, Hathungla and Sulunga , overlooking the Sumdorung river. Two
forward posts, Jaya and Negi, were set up across the river just below the ridge
and only 10 metres from a Chinese forward post. The Chinese were
taken completely by surprise as perhaps were our own political leaders.
The
then External Affairs Minister, Shri N.D. Tiwari was transiting Beijing on his
way back from Pyong Yang after attending the Non-Aligned Coordination Bureau
meeting that September, to try and assuage Chinese anger. I was accompanying
him en route to Tokyo having been deputed to Pyong Yang to assist our
delegation. Senior Chinese Foreign Ministry officials were at hand at the
airport to receive our delegation. In the brief exchange that took place at the
airport, our Minister’s protestations of peace and goodwill were met with the
not unreasonable comment that while our leaders were talking peace they were
making aggressive military moves on the ground at the same time. China would
only be satisfied if Indian troops vacated the ridge they had occupied. China
would not be fooled; it would “listen to what is said, but see what action is
taken.”
In later talks
we agreed to vacate the heights on our side if the Chinese retreated behind the
Thagla ridge, but since they were not ready to do so, we stayed put as well.
While we may not have planned it this way, the Chinese judged our actions
through their own prism: that we had countered their unexpected move by a well
orchestrated counter move of our own. Subsequently, I am told, that the
offensive and overbearing tone adopted by Chinese Foreign Ministry officials
also changed to being more polite and civilized
The next several years were spent in the two sides discussing
disengagement in this sector and finally
in 1992, the eyeball to eyeball confrontation was ended and a number of
confidence building measures adopted. The lesson to be drawn is not that we
should be militarily provocative but that we should have enough capabilities
deployed to convince the other side that aggressive moves would invite counter
moves. This is the reason why it is so important for us to speed up the up gradation
of our border infrastructure and communication links along all our borders, not
just with China.
In dealing with
China, therefore, one must constantly analyze the domestic and geopolitical
environment as perceived by China, which is the prism through which its
strategic calculus is shaped and implemented.
In 2005, India
was being courted as an emerging power both by Europe and the U.S., thereby
expanding its own room for manoeuvre. The Chinese response to this was to
project a more positive and amenable posture towards India. This took the shape
of concluding the significant Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for
seeking a settlement of the border issue; the depiction of Sikkim as part of
India territory in Chinese maps and the declaration of a bilateral Strategic and
Cooperative Partnership with India. In
private parleys with Indian leaders, their Chinese counterparts conveyed a
readiness to accept India’s permanent membership of the Security Council,
though it was not willing to state this in black and white in the Joint
Statement.
Since then,
however, as Indian prospects appeared to have diminished and the perceived
power gap with China has widened, the Chinese sensitivity to Indian interests
has also eroded. It is only in recent
months that the tide has turned somewhat, when China has been facing a
countervailing backlash to its assertive posture in the South China Sea and the
US has declared its intention to “rebalance” its security assets in the
Asia-Pacific region. There has been a
setback to Chinese hitherto dominating presence in Myanmar and a steady
devaluation of Pakistan’s value to China as a proxy power to contain
India.
At home, there are prospects of
slower growth and persistent ethnic unrest in Xinjiang and Tibet. A major leadership transition is underway
adding to the overall sense of uncertainly and anxiety. We are, therefore, once again witnessing
another renewed though probably temporary phase of greater friendliness towards
India, but it’s a pity that we are unable to engage in active and imaginative
diplomacy to leverage this opportunity to India’s enduring advantage, given the
growing incoherence of our national polity.
I will speak
briefly on Chinese attitudes specific to India and how China sees itself in
relation to India. While going through a recent publication on China in 2020, I
came across an observation I consider apt for this exercise. The historian
Jacques Barzun is quoted as saying: “To see
ourselves as others see us is a valuable gift, without doubt. But in
international relations what is still rarer and far more useful is to see
others as they see themselves.”
It is true that
through their long history, India and China have mostly enjoyed a benign
relationship. This was mainly due to the forbidding geographical buffers
between the two sides, the Taklamalan desert on the Western edges of the
Chinese empire, the vast, icy plateau of Tibet to the South and the ocean
expanse to its East. Such interaction as did take place was through both the
caravan routes across what is now Xinjiang as well as through the sea-borne
trade routes across the Indian Ocean and South China Sea, linking Indian ports
on both the Eastern and Western seaboard to the East coast of China.
India was not
located in the traditional Chinese political order consisting of subordinate
states, whether such subordination was real or imagined. In civilizational
terms, too, India, as a source of Buddhist religion and philosophy and, at some
points in history, the knowledge capital of the region, may have been
considered a special case, a parallel centre of power and culture, but
comfortably far away. During the age of imperialism and colonialism, India came
into Chinese consciousness as a source
of the opium that the British insisted on dumping into China. The use of Indian
soldiers in the various military assaults on China by the British and the
deployment of Indian police forces in the British Concessions, may have also
left a negative residue about India and Indians in the Chinese mind. This was
balanced by several strong positives, however, in particular the mutual
sympathy between the two peoples struggling for political liberation and
emancipation throughout the first half of the 20th century.
To some extent,
these positives continued after Indian independence in 1947 and China’s
liberation in 1949 and were even reinforced thanks to Pandit Nehru’s passionate
belief in Asian resurgence and the seminal role that India and China could play
in the process.
However, such sentiments were soon overlaid by the challenges
of national consolidation in both countries and the pressures of heightened Cold
War tensions. With Chinese occupation of Tibet in 1950, India and China became contiguous
neighbours for the first time in history. When the 1959 revolt in Tibet erupted
and the Dalai Lama and 60,000 Tibetans sought and received shelter in India,
the differences between the two sides on the boundary issue, took on a
strategic dimension, as has been pointed out most recently by Kissinger in his
book “On China”.
The 1962 War was
not so much about the boundary as it was a Chinese response to a perceived
threat to China’s control over Tibet, however misplaced such perception may
have been. The comprehensive defeat of Indian forces in the short war and the
regional and international humiliation of India that followed, allowed China to
conveniently locate India in its traditional inter-state pattern, as a
subordinate state, not capable of ever matching the pre-eminence of Chinese
power and influence. Since 1962, most Chinese portrayals of India and Indian
leaders in conversations with other world leaders or, more lately, in articles
by some scholars and commentators, have been starkly negative.
An Indian would
find it quite infuriating to read some of the exchanges on India and Indian
leaders in the Kissinger Transcripts. In recent times, Chinese commentaries
take China’s elevated place in Asia and the world as a given, but Indian aspirations are dismissed as a
“dream”. There are repeated references to the big gap between the
“comprehensive national power” of the two countries. India’s indigenous
capabilities are usually dismissed as having been borrowed from abroad. In an
interesting research paper entitled “Chinese Responses to India’s Military
Modernization”, Lora Salmaan refers to the “over confidence” phenomenon that
characterises Chinese comparisons of their own capabilities vis-à-vis India.
She points outs that Indian claims of domestic production and innovation are
frequently dismissed by Chinese analysts by adding the phrase “so-called” or
putting “indigenous” or “domestic” under quotes. She concludes that “These
rhetorical flourishes suggest elements of derision and dismissiveness in
Chinese attitudes towards India’s domestic programmes and abilities.”
This
dismissiveness also colours Chinese analysis of Indian politics and society.
The usual Chinese refrain is that India is chaotic and undisciplined and does
not have what it takes to be a great power like China. In an article entitled
“Why China is Wary of India”, the commentator Peter Lee relates an interesting
story of what transpired at a Washington Security Conference: “A Chinese
delegate caused an awkward silence among the congenial group at a post-event
drinks session when he stated that India was “an undisciplined country where
the plague and leprosy still exist. How
a big dirty country like that can rise so quickly amazed us”.
Currently, there
are two strands in Chinese perceptions about India. There are strong, lingering attitudes that
dismiss India’s claim as a credible power and regard its great power
aspirations as “arrogance” and as being an unrealistic pretension. The other strand, also visible in scholarly
writings and in the series of leadership summits that have taken place at regular
intervals, is recognition that India’s
economic, military and scientific and technological capabilities are on the
rise, even if they do not match China. India is valued as an attractive market
for Chinese products at a time when traditional markets in the West are flat. China is also respectful of India’s role in
multilateral fora, where on several global issues Indian interests converge
with China. I have personal experience of working closely and most productively
with Chinese colleagues in the UN Climate Change negotiations and our trade
negotiators have found the Chinese valuable allies in WTO negotiations. In such
settings Chinese comfortably defer to Indian leadership. I have also found that
on issues of contention, there is reluctance to confront India directly, the
effort usually being to encourage other countries to play a proxy role in
frustrating Indian diplomacy.
This was clearly
visible during the Nuclear Suppliers Group meeting in Vienna in 2008, when
China did not wish to be the only country to oppose the waiver for India in
nuclear trade, as it could have since the Group functions by consensus. China may have refused to engage India in any
dialogue on nuclear or missile issues, but that does not mean that Indian
capabilities in this regard so unnoticed or their implications for Chinese
security are ignored. It is in the
maritime sphere that China considers Indian capabilities to possess the most
credibility and as affecting Chinese security interests. These two strands reflect an ambivalence about India’s emergence -
dismissive on the one hand, a wary, watchful and occasionally respectful
posture on the other. Needless to say,
it is what trajectory India itself traverses in its economic and social
development that will mostly influence Chinese perception about the country.
Additionally,
how India manages its relations with other major powers, in particular, the
United States, would also be a factor.
My own experience has been that the closer India-US relations are seen
to be, the more amenable China has proved to be. I do not accept the argument that a closer
India-US relationship leads China to adopt a more negative and aggressive
posture towards India. The same is true
of India’s relations with countries like Japan, Indonesia and Australia, who
have convergent concerns about Chinese dominance of the East Asian
theatre. I also believe that it is a
question of time before similar concerns surface in Russia as well. India should be mindful of this in
maintaining and consolidating its already friendly, but sometimes, sketchy
relations with Russia. The stronger India’s links are with these major powers,
the more room India would have in its relations with China.
It would be apparent
from my presentation that India and China harbour essentially adversarial
perceptions of one another. This is
determined by geography as well as by the growth trajectories of the two countries. China is the one power which impinges most
directly on India’s geopolitical space.
As the two countries expand their respective economic and military
capabilities and their power radiates outwards from their frontiers, they will
inevitably intrude into each other’s zone of interest, what has been called
“over-lapping peripheries”.
It is not
necessary that this adversarial relationship
will inevitably generate tensions or, worse, another military conflict, but in order to avoid that
India needs to fashion a strategy which is based on a constant familiarity with
Chinese strategic calculus , the changes in this calculus as the regional and
global landscape changes and which is, above all, informed by a deep
understanding of Chinese culture, the psyche of its people and how these, too,
are undergoing change in the process of modernization.
Equally we should
endeavour to shape Chinese perceptions through building on the positives and
strengthening collaboration on convergent interests, which are not
insignificant. One must always be
mindful of the prism through which China interprets the world around it and
India’s place in that world. It is only
through such a complex and continuing exercise that China’s India challenge can
be dealt with.
Sometimes a strong
sense of history, portions of which may be imagined rather than real, may lead
the Chinese to ignore the fact that the contemporary geo-political landscape is
very different from that which prevailed during Chinese ascendancy in the past.
Merely achieving a higher proportion of the global GDP does not guarantee the
restoration of pre-eminence. Ancient China was not a globalized economy. It was
a world in itself, mostly self sufficient and shunning the less civilized
periphery around it. Today, China’s emergence is integrally linked to the
global economy. It is a creature of interdependence. Similarly, today the
geopolitical terrain is populated by a number of major powers, including in the
Asian theatre. A reassertion of Chinese dominance, or an assumption that being
at the top of the pile in Asia is part of some natural order, is likely to bump
up against painful ground reality, as it has since 2009, opening the door to
the US rebalancing. The recent reports of a slowing down of Chinese growth
should also be sobering.
On the Indian
side, the failure to look at the larger picture often results, by default, in
looking at India-China relations inordinately through the military prism. This
also inhibits us from locating opportunities in an expanding Chinese market and
in promoting a focus on the rich history of cultural interchange and the more
contemporary pathways our two cultures have taken in fascinating ways. This
covers music, dance, cinema, literature and painting. Chinese successes in
development and its focus on infrastructure do have lessons for India which
should be embraced. And if China, for its own reasons, is willing to invest in
India’s own massive infrastructure development plans, why not examine how this
could be leveraged while keeping our security concerns at the forefront? There
are many areas of grey and it is for dispassionate strategists on both sides to
explore and help shape a future for China-India relations that aspires to be as
benign as it has been for most of the past.
I thank you for
your attention.
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