Natural partners in the Asian century

Natural partners in the Asian century

Context

There is a need for a fresh perspective in India’s China policy

Continental shift

Asia already accounts for almost half of the world’s population, half of the world’s container traffic, one-third of its bulk cargo and 40% of the world’s off-shore oil reserves. It is home to several fast-growing new economies with GDP growth rates above 7% per year, i.e. a doubling of the GDP every 10 years.

Asia’s Defence spending

Asian defence spending ($439 billion) is also much more than Europe’s ($386 billion)

In a few years half of the world’s naval fleet and combat aircraft with extended range missiles, supported by highly sophisticated communications networks, will soon be seen roaming in the Indo-Pacific region.

Two powerhubs

Also, since the late 1990s, China and India have been rapidly emerging as influential power hubs

• Being two of the three most post populous and largest GDP nations, India and China, both culturally akin, are socially structured on family values and associated social attitudes.
• Potentially both are poised to fill the role of global powers
• To achieve that potential, both require hardware, software and the clear mindset for exercising this power
• As of now, China is ahead of India in reaching that level. We are concerned here with the question whether India can reach it.

Restructuring of India’s china policy needed

The diminishing influence of Western powers in the region, and as of now the acknowledged rising power of China are the new global reality.

Looking beyond Pakistan

Since 1971, Pakistan has already broken into two, and there are still fissiparous internal pressures. India therefore needs a new mindset: to look beyond Pakistan. Moreover, it depends on whether India’s intellectual outlook matures enough to find acceptable accommodation with China for a partnership in Asian peace.

The US

• The U.S. has become a much friendlier nation for India, especially because the Soviet Union unravelled, and India’s economy is growing fast to become an open, competitive market economy, the third largest in PPP terms
• But the U.S. also is hesitant to put boots on the ground to fight terrorist establishments. Hence India can help the U.S. fill that growing void in return for the sophisticated military hardware that it lacks

India not exercising its power

• The world already is dazzled by India’s prowess in information technology, the capability to produce pharmaceuticals at low cost, and the high quality of its trained manpower capable of innovation
• But India does not exert this soft power advantage on the world scene commensurate with this potential or its size in Asia.

India should lead from the front

• We are still on the international stage in a “petitioner” mode on vital national and international security issues — an unfortunate hangover from Nehru’s diplomacy of the 1950s
• Unless we take ourselves seriously, stop craving foreign certificates and acquire commensurate military hardware by reaching spaces vacated by the U.S., others will not acknowledge our global status and comply accordingly

A strategic bond

The key for India today is to bond strategically with China. But this requires dealing bilaterally on huge pending issues. After my recent visit to China, I believe there is an unfortunate trust deficit that requires frank, hard-nosed bilateral discussion at a high political level and not between bureaucrats. China recognises India’s potential and respects the same.

Eastward Ethos

India has to completely reorient its strategic mindset. A change in strategic conceptualisation is needed, that is, from the colonial hangover of junior partnership for the sake of crumbs from the materialistic “Westward Ho” syndrome, to an Eastward ethos, concomitantly from the present land-focussed thinking to Ocean-centric articulation

Indian Ocean, the new epicenter of global power

The Indian Ocean has now emerged as the epicentre of global power play in the 21st century. Gone are the outdated phrases like Asia-Pacific.

We need to recognise this centrality and primacy of the Indian Ocean in India’s global economic and military activism: the Indian Ocean is the epicentre of global power play in the 21st century

With Indonesian partnership, India can monitor the Malacca Strait through which over 80% of the freight traffic of China and East Asia passes.

Develop deeper linkages with China

As an important part of its diplomacy, India has thus to develop deeper cultural and civilisational linkages with China and the rest of Asia

India has to realise that it can’t just be a spectator, or a mere visible participant, or even a ‘pole’ in the so-called multi-polar world

India reduced to a mere spectator

• China has conceptualised and implemented the centrality of befriending all of India’s neighbours and has brought them on board in its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
• In the Chinese Communist Party Congress in the early 2000s, Hu Jintao, then President of China, had adopted the goal of developing a “Harmonious Society”, of blending spiritual Confucianist and Taoist values with aspirations for material progress
• This is similar to the Hindu values of placing on a pedestal intellect and sacrifice (gyana and tyaga)
• Since then China has proceeded systematically to bring countries of Asia under its influence with imaginative proposals such as the BRI and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor
• India has been reduced to merely reacting to such proposals without any of her own to canvass as an alternative

New paradigm

India, therefore, has to strive imaginatively to become a stakeholder in this new global power paradigm: to give up its reticence and passive diplomacy and learn to exercise power without being seen as a bully by our neighbours