India-China: Friends or Foes?
Today I attended a discussion at the House of Commons on India-China, organised by the Commonwealth Journalists Association (CJA). The central question of the discussion was whether the two countries are friends or foes? Given their historical background, it definitely comes to mind that the two countries share their set of differences as well as cooperation. But what does the future hold?
One person at the discussion very candidly mentioned that India seems to be very concerned and worried about the rise of China in the world. But, on the contrary, China is least bothered about India’s rise. For China, the benchmark for development is not India but United States of America. China has its eyes fixed on the U.S and its rise is in a way a threat to U.S. Why then would China be bothered of India’s rise?
Another interesting point that came was the fact that we always celebrate India’s democracy and criticise China’s one-party government. It is always hugely debated how Indian system of governance gives you more freedom and the Chinese system restricts your freedom. But having said that, when one comes to think of it, which system of government has delivered better? If democracy has sanctioned freedom to its citizens, one-party system has also brought about a GDP of ten per cent.
And not only that, there is also a stability in terms of the country’s population. But when we come to talk of population, India has 54% of its population below the age of 30 whereas China has only 23% population in that age group. In terms of young manpower and resource, India is definitely leading.
As Gurcharan Das mentioned today, we have also jumped from our Industrial revolution onto our service industry. We are severely lacking a sound manufacturing industry like the Chinese system. But a Chinese expert, Linda Yueh, mentioned today how the two countries have very well cooperated in areas of economic development. So if Indian system of Special Economic Zones (SEZ) is modeled on the Chinese programme because China is definitely way ahead in terms of its manufacturing sector, Chinese governments are taking help from India in restructuring their agricultural sector which has been on a decline.
Linda Yueh very rightly mentioned that India and China are powerful enough to form a G-2 in the world. China like U.S drives the economic growth of the country to a great extent, according to the World Bank. The question still remains whether we are friends or foes?
I personally feel we share a love-hate relationship with China. Even after its claim on Arunachal Pradesh, we still continue to accept Tibet as a part of China. And that doesn’t prevent us from giving shelter to Dalai Lama as well. So why don’t we then accept Tibet as an autonomous region? Well we can’t even afford to antagonise Chinese sentiments. Can we? So what do we do?
Well I think in many ways we are back to our non alignment policy. We prefer to stay out of controversies in order to play safe. We are worried about our interests with China and at the same time we also want to be taken very seriously with our position in the entire world. In a situation like this, China is like our ex-mate with whom we are trying our best to patch up but no matter how much you try and patch up, the past keeps cropping up.
But the question whether we are friends or foes still remains unanswered….