{"id":35483,"date":"2018-10-31T17:47:16","date_gmt":"2018-10-31T12:17:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=35483"},"modified":"2018-10-31T17:47:16","modified_gmt":"2018-10-31T12:17:16","slug":"how-china-gained-from-partition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/how-china-gained-from-partition\/","title":{"rendered":"How China gained from Partition:\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/indianexpress.com\/article\/opinion\/columns\/how-china-gained-from-partition-india-pakistan-british-raj-4807566\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">How China gained from Partition<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Context<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The sundering of the political space in the Subcontinent gets a lot less attention in the narratives of independent India\u2019s international relations than the sentimental accounts of Delhi\u2019s non-alignment and moralpolitik.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>India and China since the mid-20th century<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">India was divided in 1947 and China was united in 1949. The Subcontinent\u2019s great partition locked the successor states India and Pakistan in a perennial conflict. China overcame an era of fragmentation to come together as a strong nation.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If the British Raj emerged as a powerful state by generating a measure of political and administrative coherence to the Subcontinent, its dissolution accompanied by division resulted in the strategic diminution of its successor states, India and Pakistan.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The combination of British power and the massive resources of an undivided Subcontinent created what came to be known as the \u201cIndia Centre\u201d that dominated the geopolitics of Asia and the Indian Ocean.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Indian capital and labour, its armies and administrative systems were central to political stability, economic globalisation and the spread of modernising ideologies in the eastern hemisphere.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Before Partition<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Before Partition, India\u2019s energies economic and military radiated outwards.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Post Partition, the Subcontinent\u2019s energies turned inward in defence of the new political borders<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Anglo-American initiatives to replace the India Centre with such new regional security structures as SEATO and CENTO flopped.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To make matters even more interesting, the communist giants, Russia and China fell apart at the turn of the 1960s and opened the door for the American strategic partnership with China that would contribute enormously to Beijing\u2019s rise as a great power.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">China was not only good at exploiting the great power conflicts to its own benefit, its leaders also clearly saw the strategic implications of Partition.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They also saw the opportunities to probe independent India\u2019s limitations in sustaining primacy in the Subcontinent and the Indian Ocean that it had inherited from the Raj.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Early decades after partition<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">China seemed relatively marginal to South Asian geopolitics.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">India\u2019s energies were focused on opposing the Anglo-American co-option of Pakistan into the Cold<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">War alliance system and the supply of Western arms to the Pakistan military. India bet that it could manage the inherent contradictions with China through a conscious befriending of Beijing. But the outcomes abound in paradoxes.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Given the anti-Communist orientation of CENTO and SEATO, you would have thought China would view Pakistan with suspicion and embrace an India that chose to remain non-aligned and refused to support the Cold War alliances.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For China, Partition is a gift that continues to give. After years trying to limit Western influences in its neighbourhood, India now finds halting China\u2019s penetration of the Subcontinent will need a lot more political will and strategic purpose.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How China gained from Partition:\u00a0 Context The sundering of the political space in the Subcontinent gets a lot less attention in the narratives of independent India\u2019s international relations than the sentimental accounts of Delhi\u2019s non-alignment and moralpolitik. India and China since the mid-20th century India was divided in 1947 and China was united in 1949.&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/how-china-gained-from-partition\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">How China gained from Partition:\u00a0<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-test-1","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35483\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}