There has been no dearth of books on China in recent years. Former practitioners, security analysts, economists and journalists have all dared to enter the fad of China watching. Harsh Pant’s short and very readable book is in line with this trend and is, in the author’s words, “a polemic on the contemporary state of India’s China policy”.
Although the author is not a professional China watcher, it is always useful to receive observations from outside India’s elite sinologists. Until recently, China-watching in India had been the exclusive preserve of professional diplomats, a tiny group of scholars, and court historians who, not surprisingly, have rarely challenged each other intellectually.
Arguably, this was, partially at least, the result of a self-anointed mission that our first generation of China watchers had taken upon themselves to manage this tumultuous relationship after the 1962 war. This may have been a legitimate mandate in the years when India and China were openly hostile and without adequate or any official channels for engagement. In the post-normalisation phase, however, China watchers have been reluctant to adapt from being merely guardians of the bilateral relationship to offering critical analyses and emerging as a valuable source of policy-relevant advice. For a start, one would like to see Mandarin-proficient scholars regularly tap primary and secondary source literature and disseminate it to a wider audience in India.
Returning to the present work, three-fourths of the book is a broad sweep of India-China relations over the past decade and identifies well-publicised areas of concord and discord, and highlights China’s relatively larger global footprint, which emanates from its more outward-oriented economic structure and the scale of its industrial ascent.
It is the chapter titled “Why the lack of a serious response” which is, in this reviewer’s opinion, the core of the book. Here the author promises to “analyse the constraints” that stifle a China strategy. The main thrust throughout is that there is no “coherent long-term strategic vision insofar as India’s China policy is concerned”. It appears the author is really talking to the political elite, which has been an apathetic and irresolute stakeholder on matters of national security.
The author, however, does not flesh out his theme other than alluding to cultural and institutional constraints and expressing his dismay at the quality of public debates over China’s rise. This is unfortunate because national security decision-making reform has been an under-researched area.
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In fact, the problem is not just China-specific but a systemic one. An effective strategy requires institutions that can efficiently “bring means and ends into better balance”. Here it is well recognised that efficient inter-agency coordination among departments and ministries, and political-military integration via “jointness” of the three armed services is simply lacking. This is important because “a state’s diplomatic posture will lack effectiveness if it is not backed by a credible military posture”. And a credible military posture can only be developed if the present parochialism is replaced by structured institutional collaboration within the military establishment.
The author admits that India’s coyness with China “has a lot to do with its as yet underdeveloped power capabilities”. Nevertheless, despite China’s lead in nearly all the metrics of national power, India can pursue an asymmetric strategy that prioritises select economic, military and institutional capabilities, and “should resist the temptation to match China weapon for weapon”. Logically, the subcontinent and its periphery should be the principal theatre of focus in our China strategy. For, as the author notes, “if China can so easily penetrate India’s immediate neighbourhood... what hope does India have of competing with China in the far-flung regions of the world?”
One aspect of India’s China-watching that is not covered in this monograph is the lack of a sophisticated appraisal of China’s relations with the major powers, especially the US. This is extremely relevant because inaccurate assessments of Sino-American relations can lead Indian foreign policy astray. For instance, underestimating the US-China complex interdependence or exaggerating their conflictual aspects will not imply merely academic implications.
While India and China are often admonished for not demonstrating a realistic understanding of each other, it should not be forgotten that until 1951, Tibet not China was India’s neighbour for the previous two millennia. An imagined and exaggerated historiography of political and economic interactions has sought to embellish this basic historical fact. It is then hardly surprising that both sides have been slow to acquaint themselves to the other’s world view.
One possible path to developing a China strategy would be for Indian strategists to focus, paradoxically, on India’s grand strategy. Instead of lamenting an all encompassing China threat, which would ineluctably produce empty rhetoric, unfocused allocation of resources and ad hoc reactions, India needs to develop a well-defined hierarchy of interests and then assess areas where the China challenge is most potent and implement a plan (including the attendant institutional restructuring within the state apparatus) to countervail it. For if we are unclear on where we are heading or where we seek to go, how can we possibly scrutinise and implement a vision to buttress and secure our goals from China or anybody else?
The reviewer is a research fellow at the Centre for Policy Alternatives, New Delhi, and co-author of India China Relations: The Border Issue and Beyond (Viva Books: 2009) and Chasing the Dragon: Will India catch up with China? (Pearson Education: 2009)
THE CHINA SYNDROME
Grappling with an Uneasy Relationship
Harsh V Pant
HarperCollins, 2010
280 pages; Rs 399