Author: Rajeev Srinivasan
Publication: Rediff on Net
Date: November 22, 2002
URL: http://www.rediff.com/news/2002/nov/23chin.htm
If I were to take the long view
of history, I would contend that 1962 was a relatively minor skirmish in
the long- term civilizational competition between India and China for the
domination of the Asian ethos.
The only significant difference
now as compared to centuries ago is that for the first time in history,
the buffer state of Tibet has disappeared and Chinese troops are on India's
borders, and this means China can threaten India because it controls the
headwaters of the Indus and the Brahmaputra, which arise in Tibet.
Yet, as far back as I can think,
the two civilizations have been rivals in the grand scheme of events. There
are distinct archetypes that drive the two. India has always been the realm
of the abstract; and China that of the concrete. India is individualistic;
China is collective. India is open and inclusive. China is closed and exclusive.
It is interesting to compare the
results of this rivalry on the rest of Asia. It should be remembered that
there was substantial out-migration from China, whereas there was very
little from India towards the Asian hinterland, except for an occasional
foray by an emperor or two, which probably only resulted in small population
movements.
The impact of Indian ideas can be
seen everywhere: in languages, rituals, architecture, art, mythology, religion,
as far east as Cambodia and Vietnam. Chinese cuisine and scripts, especially
in East Asia, industrial arts, and agriculture have been China's legacy
in its periphery. It would appear that India has been more successful in
exporting its civilization peacefully, strictly through the force of its
ideas.
Where China has bypassed India is
in areas where the collective will is important: for instance in huge projects,
such as the Great Wall, the infrastructure projects today, and in manufacturing
world-class sportsmen/women. India, with fractious individualism and vested-interest
politics, is succeeding in areas where there is a greater need for individual
creativity, such as entertainment and R&D.
To forecast their future trajectories,
it is necessary to look back at the past. It is a little-known but stunning
fact that up until 1750 CE the four greatest manufacturing centres in the
world were in India and China: the Brahmaputra and Kaveri deltas and the
Pearl River and Yangtze deltas, respectively. Together, the two Asian behemoths
accounted for roughly 60 per cent of the entire manufactured goods in the
world before colonialism ruined both.
This fact is astonishing to most
Indians, who do not realize how advanced India was in industry at that
time: India had world-beating skills in areas such as specialty metals,
for instance the so- called Damascene steels. Given the natural and human
resources of both the Asian nations, it is only fitting that they will
become the leaders in industry once again. Some forecasters contend that
their combined share of world manufacturing will overtake that of Europe
well before 2050.
The trend in China is already clear:
they are world leaders in small-scale manufacturing, toys, clothing, traditional
medicines, and increasingly in white goods and electronics. But it is worth
considering that India too has nascent clusters of excellence: in business
process outsourcing, in medical services, in gemstones and jewellery, in
small machine tools, in educational services, in video/advertising and
entertainment, in space applications, and in agriculture and related food
processing.
Incidentally, services are 'sticky':
that is, since they depend on human resources, once services are outsourced
to a country, they tend to remain there, because the labour is not mobile.
This is a sustainable competitive advantage for India as compared to China,
for manufacturing is not sticky: as labour costs increase in China, the
factories can be relocated to even lower-cost locations like Vietnam or
Myanmar. So India could be to services what China has been to small-scale
manufacturing.
There are other myths about Chinese
invincibility that Indians need to disabuse themselves of. After the 1962
war, some Indians have an irrational fear of the Chinese army. The facts
suggest otherwise.
According to Ashley Tellis of the
Rand Corporation, Indian capability in 2002 is much greater than in 1962,
when India was totally unprepared. Tellis contends that there is a rough
military balance in the Himalayas along the India-Tibet border.
It is worth remembering that in
1979 or so, the Chinese invaded Vietnam to 'teach them a lesson' (and timed
it to mock Vajpayee, who was on a visit to China as foreign minister at
the time). However, the small but battle-hardened Vietnamese Army thrashed
the Chinese, forcing them to retreat with massive casualties. In the 1962
war, Indian soldiers showed great courage in repulsing vastly larger numbers
of the enemy: for instance, there is the heroic story of the Charlie Company,
13th Battalion, Kumaon Regiment, at Rezang La in Chushul, Ladakh. A mere
114 Indian soldiers accounted for perhaps a thousand Chinese.
The Indian Navy, with its blue water
capability, is ahead of the Chinese. It is only in nuclear weapons and
missile systems that China has a significant advantage over India. And
of course, in the fact that they, quite happily, proliferate these technologies
to all sorts of unsavoury elements as part of the creation of a Sino-Islamic
axis as a counterweight to Euro-American power plays.
Nevertheless, in general, the two
cultures have unconsciously followed their true natures.
Chinese practise exclusivism: they
think they are superior to everyone else -- the Middle Kingdom -- and all
others are barbarians. They have manufactured memories of a mythical Golden
Age, although, with much of its land being non-arable and flood-prone,
China has always led a generally hand- to-mouth existence: hence their
massive out- migration. And they have the more recent memories of colonial
humiliation; which makes them exactly like the Nazis between the two World
Wars: really dangerous.
Indians practise inclusivism, accepting
outside influences. India tolerates diversity, and accepts refugees from
anywhere. Not for India the type of Han monoculture that China aspires
to create. In the process, China loses diversity; for instance, by destroying
Tibetan culture, China has lost whatever treasures Tibet could have given
the world. India is so diverse that today the majority Hindus find themselves
besieged, as the State goes into overdrive to protect minority interests.
After World War II, both nations
came up with interesting models. Both were active in working with other
post-colonial states. India started believing its own propaganda about
how a motley crew of impoverished and tiny nations could provide an alternative
to the bipolar world of the Soviet Union and the United States. In reality,
the ragtag Third World, consisting as it does mostly of banana republics,
could not, and did not, have much impact on the rest of the world.
The tragedy for India was that it
internalized a self-image of a banana republic. Of course, a super banana
republic, led by redoubtable statesmen such as J Nehru and K Menon, but
a banana republic nevertheless. This is nonsensical, because India, by
way of its natural resources, population and civilization, is a great power
that once was and will be again.
China, on the other hand, was careful:
they let it be known that they were an incipient superpower, one 'friendly'
to the needs of all the downtrodden nations of the world ('poor countries
of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains', or words
to that effect). They kept their distance from all those meaningless Non-Aligned
Movement palavers and their holding of hands and frequent singing of kumbaya.
Instead, the Chinese realized at
some point that economics was key, and they set about reforming their economic
policies. There are fundamental economic problems, for instance the very
large non- performing assets of banks, but, as seen during the drama of
the latest regime change in China, there is a consensus on supporting entrepreneurship
and capitalism, in an effort to become an economic superpower.
But China has a major problem coming
up: the necessary transition from a totalitarian political entity to a
democratic one. Other East Asian states, notably South Korea and Singapore,
have provided political rights only after their economies took off. Whether
the continent-sized state of China can do this remains to be seen. Of course,
there continue to be simmering problems with what could be called the Han
Empire: the restive areas of Xinjiang and Tibet continue to wish to secede.
India, on the other hand, has set
its polity on the right path first by offering genuine mechanisms for democratic
input. Alas, this has resulted in the abomination of democracy in the country.
There may also be a 'democracy penalty' that is holding India back from
reaching its economic potential. Be that as it may, India is making efforts
to turbo-charge its economy to reach the 8 per cent growth that it needs:
the privatization activity, the major highway projects (eg the Golden Quadrilateral),
the freeing of sectors like IT and biotech from intrusive government intervention.
China has a certain advantage over
India based on its totalitarian power structure. The country has always
thrived when there was a strong imperial centre. What worked in the age
of Chinese empires is now working again for them, for the new Communist
emperors (Mao, Deng) have been able to get them all moving in the same
direction.
And this strong centre has adopted
Sun Tzu's tactics of stealthy warfare: by proxy and through missionaries.
Thus China contains India through its proxy Pakistan and its fifth columnists,
the Marxists of India.
Instead of responding with a Chanakyan
tactic of flanking attacks, India has dithered. To begin with, it had naïve
leaders, mediocre yes-men and personality cults; today, it has too many
people in the bureaucracy, the intelligentsia and in politics who are in
effect agents of the Chinese. It is unbelievable that the Indian State
has not punished the Chinese for adventurism, for instance by proliferating
to Taiwan, Japan, or Vietnam, just as China has proliferated nuclear weapons
and missiles to North Korea and Pakistan.
But both civilizations have suffered
from poor-quality leadership, whereas the individual citizens have generally
excelled at carrying on their normal business. Leadership is at a premium.
Because of the opaque, Forbidden City nature of Chinese politics, it is
hard for the average China watcher to understand how competent a Hu Jintao
is going to be. On the other hand, because of the wide- open nature of
Indian politics, it can be seen that almost all of the politicians in the
country are venal.
On average, both these nations are
improving the lot of their teeming populations. But while India extended
the hand of friendship to China, the latter reciprocated with flowery speeches
and promises of peaceful co-existence while at the same time using its
proxies to encircle and contain India.
But with an emerging feeling among
the ASEAN and East Asia about needing a counterbalance to an increasingly
imperialistic China, India's ability to police the oil tanker routes in
the Indian Ocean, and the Chinese recognition of a backlash from its axis
with Muslim nations, a different dynamic is emerging. India might make
a game out of it, after all.
(Rajeev Srinivasan, a rediff.com
columnist, writes frequently on China. His interests are the strategic
and economic aspects of China's development.)