The rise of China is India’s only important diplomatic challenge. Relations with Pakistan is in many ways, and for both countries, an extension of domestic politics. Relations with the United States is increasingly mediated by business and civil society interests that circumscribe the role of diplomacy. Relations with the rest of the world, big powers and small, can be handled without too much trouble if the Indian economy continues to grow and offers new opportunities for the flow of goods, services and people.
China is in a different category. Even when trade has grown phenomenally, political relations remain testy. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh remarked in Washington DC that he was struck by recent Chinese assertiveness. One of India’s important China-watchers, Alka Acharya of the Jawaharlal Nehru University is, of course, not surprised that growing economic engagement has not translated into better political relations because she questions this assumption to begin with. Her concluding thought in this book is “Even as the processes of incremental engagement carry on, India will have to squarely address the challenge of understanding the many paradoxes that is the face of this new China. In the process, politics will — and must — play a central role. The achievements of the last decade and a half testify to the importance of the political. Talking about, and with China, is talking political.”
Fair enough. But the book does not explain clearly what the many paradoxes of today’s China are, nor does it tell us why the politics of our relationship is out of step with the economics. Perhaps the answer lies in what is happening within China. But this book is not about the dynamics of internal change and domestic politics in China. Regrettably, there are few Indians who have been able to specialise in that. The book under review is more about the history of diplomatic engagement between the two countries. This is a reasonably encouraging history since both sides have tried to improve their relations over the past two decades. But it is instructive to see how quickly bad memories of a forgotten war have been revived with “recent Chinese assertiveness” on the border issue.
Clearly, there is a lack of “strategic trust” between the two neighbours and both will have to work hard to create and renew it. Increased interaction among the elites is critical. Here the India-US relationship is instructive. Even as our diplomatic bureaucracy remains sceptical about US intentions, the Indian elite has bought into the bilateral friendship. The India-US nuclear deal debate showed how the urban middle class is shaping the India-US relationship. We need a similar civil society engagement between India and China to forge better understanding between the two Asian neighbours.
Acharya’s book is a useful survey of the major milestones of recent India-China engagement. Read together with John Garver’s classic Protracted Contest: Sino-Indian Rivalry in the 20th Century (2001), it would bring anyone interested in this bilateral relationship up to date with the political side of the relationship. However, for a scholar who has travelled to China, Acharya could have helped us by introducing us to some of the dramatis personae in the evolving relationship. Journalistic gossip among Asia-watchers has it that Premier Wen Jiabao is the “dove” who seeks better relations with India and is restrained by the “hawks” in the People’s Liberation Army and the Chinese Communist Party bureaucracy. Is this true? If so, is it likely that Wen is losing the debate and the hawks are winning? Or, can we hope to see a moderation of recent aggressiveness.
Acharya is right to say that the “ongoing politics between India and China is incrementally, but firmly, normalising the relationship, and is reflected in the commitment to improving and consolidating ties at the highest political level.” But, contrary to the author’s assertion, this has not enabled the relationship to remain on an “even keel” as recent events have shown. So, what then has changed? Why is China more assertive?
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Is it the case that China wishes to establish once and for all that in the 21st century it will be Asia’s dominant power, indeed a global superpower? Or, are there less diabolic motives? For example, are internal differences within Chinese leadership and the domestic problems, both economic and political, manifesting themselves in external assertiveness? If the former were true, it would require an entirely different response from India, since New Delhi is never going to accept Chinese hegemony. On the other hand, if the latter is true, then India can help. As a country experienced in handling domestic dissent and all manner of fissiparous tendencies, India can help China deal with its own domestic diversity and make it feel more relaxed and secure.
How India understands the domestic and external dimensions to China’s rise will shape her response. India’s China-watchers must continue to educate us on what is happening inside China so that we can be better prepared to deal with its impact outside.
China and India: Politics of Incremental Engagement
Alka Acharya
Har-Anand Publications
271 pages;
Rs 495