When China Rules the World

China and India have much in common. They are both hugely populous countries, demographic superpowers, which are in the process of dramatic economic transformation. Between them they account for almost 40 per cent of the world’s population. They are both continental giants, China a dominating presence in East Asia and India similarly in South Asia. By the mid twenty-first century, they could both be major global powers. Together they threaten to redraw the shape of the world, tilting it massively towards Asia while at the same time projecting a new kind of nation-state of continental proportions in terms of both territory and population, a very different kind of global order from when the world was dominated by a handful of small- and medium-sized European nation-states. It is hardly surprising, then, that China and India are frequently bracketed together. Despite these similarities, however, in many respects the differences between them could hardly be greater, as symbolized by their long border running through the Himalayas, the greatest natural land barrier in the world, which serves to mark out what can only be described as a political and cultural chasm between the two countries. China has the longest continuous history of any country while India is a much more recent creation, only acquiring something like its present territory, or at least two-thirds of it, during the later period of the British Raj. [1119] Chinese civilization is defined by its relationship to the state whereas India ’s is inseparable from its caste society. India is the world’s largest democracy while in China democracy remains a largely alien concept. China has a powerful sense of identity and homogeneity, in contrast to India, which is blessed with a remarkable pluralism embracing many different races, languages and religions. These cultural differences have served to create a sense of otherness and distance and an underlying lack of understanding and empathy. It is true that India gave China Buddhism, and that there were many other intellectual exchanges between the two countries during the first millennium and beyond, but these are now largely forgotten. [1120]

For over fifty years relations between the two countries have been at best distant and suspicious, at worst antagonistic, even conflictual. After 1988 they took a turn somewhat for the better, but despite the warmer diplomatic words, there remains an underlying antipathy. There are two main causes. First, notwithstanding joint working groups and commissions, the two countries have failed to reach agreement on their border. And it was conflict over the border which led directly to the Sino-Indian War in 1962 when China inflicted a heavy military defeat on India which still rankles to this day. [1121] Second, far from exercising unchallenged hegemony in South Asia, India finds itself confronted by Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Myanmar, all of which China has deliberately befriended as a means of balancing against India, with these countries embracing China as a way of offsetting India ’s dominant position in South Asia. Of these relationships, the most important is that between China and India ’s sworn foe Pakistan, which, thanks largely to China, possesses nuclear weapons. China ’s shrewd diplomacy has meant that India has constantly been on the back foot in South Asia, unable to assert itself in the manner which its size would justify. India has proved much less diplomatically adept, failing to establish its hegemony over South Asia and not even trying to develop a serious influence in East Asia, notwithstanding the large Indian diaspora in South-East Asia, with which it has singularly failed to establish any meaningful kind of relationship. [1122]