China’s ‘inevitable’ global dominance

Learning Mandarin in Hong Kong in 1971, soon after joining the Indian Foreign Service, opened “a whole new and fascinating world” for Shyam Saran. “I was coming face to face with a civilization with a long and varied history, a vast richness of philosophical and cultural heritage, and a view of the world quite different and truly different from the others,” he says in his new book. Write in the introduction. , How China sees India and the world. Saran spent six years in China over two terms and saw its “sharp and far-reaching change”. China is today the world’s second largest economy after the US, and is already a leader in new-age technologies such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing and space exploration. He points out that despite India and China being at roughly the same economic level, India is now a “retrospective image in China’s rear-view mirror”. Part:

India and China were almost at the same economic level in 1978 with similar GDP and per capita income. Although China began to develop very rapidly thereafter, the difference between the two countries was not significant even a decade later, when Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi made a historic visit to Beijing in December 1988. Then it was possible for Deng Xiaoping to announce it. That there cannot be an Asian century without India and China playing the role of development and revival together. Growth in India’s GDP as a result of its own economic reforms and liberalization policies adopted in the early 1990s expanded India’s political and economic profile. India was behind China at the turn of the century but the gap was seen to be narrowing. In the period 2003-2007, India’s growth rate accelerated while China’s slowed down. This was the brief period when India’s diplomatic options multiplied. It was able to advance its relations with a major power to promote its relations with other major powers, thereby expanding its strategic space.

border dispute

During the visit of Indian Prime Minister [Atal Bihari] In 2003, Vajpayee went to China, two important decisions were taken. One, the two countries agreed to an early political settlement of the India-China border dispute, establishing regular talks at the level of their respective leaders’ special representatives. The Chinese side also conveyed its recognition of Sikkim as a state of India. It did not accept the state’s merger with the Indian Union in 1975 and its maps continued to depict [Sikkim] as an independent country. The background of these important decisions was the recognition that the relationship between the two major emerging economies has now acquired a global and strategic dimension, which goes beyond their bilateral relations. Therefore, it was important to resolve the long-standing border issue to enable the two countries to collaborate more closely in shaping the emerging regional and global architecture.

This development was carried forward during the visit of Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao to India in April 2005. As Foreign Secretary, I was closely associated with this visit. The Chinese already knew that India was negotiating a civil nuclear cooperation agreement with the US, which would significantly raise India’s diplomatic profile and significantly strengthen the India-US partnership. This encouraged the Chinese to balance this development by upgrading their relations with India, and this increased India’s scope for maneuvers with China. In their meeting, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and [Premier] Wen Jiabao reached a broad consensus on the following lines: one, that China was not a threat to India and that India was not a threat to China; second, there was ample room in Asia and the world for both India and China to develop simultaneously; Third, India was an economic opportunity for China, and China was also an economic opportunity for India; Fourth, as two large and emerging economies, the two countries, working together, can have a significant impact on existing global systems in diverse fields and shape new global governance in emerging domains such as climate change, cyberspace and outer space. can; Five, India-China relations have thus acquired a global and strategic dimension and to enable them to work together more effectively, it was important to resolve the India-China boundary issue at the earliest.

impact of financial crisis

The global financial and economic crisis had a major impact on the further development of India-China relations. As the disparity between the US and China began to diminish after the crisis, the asymmetry between India and China, which had previously been shrinking, began to widen once again. India’s GDP growth rate has declined and since then it has averaged around 6-7 per cent per annum. China has maintained the same growth rate as India, but on a much larger basis than India. This power asymmetry reflects a low sensitivity to India’s interests in China, the stable economic and political penetration of countries within India’s periphery, and a lower degree of tolerance towards the close ties between India and the US. In conversations at non-governmental meetings, Chinese scholars often draw attention to the fact that China’s economy was five times the size of India and this may not have been reflected in the nature of India-China relations. The implication of such a statement was that India should accept its declining ranking in Chinese perception and avoid Chinese interests.

Off the line – a line drawn by China – would invite punitive reactions, and that too is evident in recent Chinese moves against India, including a more aggressive posture along the India-China border, where relative peace and tranquility prevailed. . last several decades. In 2005, China was willing to make some concessions to India to stop the Indo-US alliance, which could be a threat to China. Its response to the Quad, which is an alliance of India, Australia, Japan and the US that could disrupt China in the Indo-Pacific, is to dismiss its relevance and adopt an even more dangerous posture towards coalition partners.

In the aftermath of the 2008 global financial and economic crisis, the Chinese assessment is that the US is a waning power, that it has lost credibility and, importantly, its willingness to exercise power. It has the power to back down and therefore, US allies and partners, the Chinese claim, cannot rely on US power to stop China. A narrative is being built on the inevitability of Chinese regional and ultimately global dominance, which would be pointless to resist.

Excerpted with permission from Juggernaut Books