Over the past five decades India has always held that China with its huge landmass, its ancient civilisation and incredible population was too big to be ignored in political or economic terms. However, the Americans continued to ignore China and carried on a farce that Taiwan was the true China. All this is of course history and after Nixon made his pilgrimage the Great Wall of China, the West has been almost bitten by the China Syndrome. The WTO entry is perhaps a culmination of that.

Today, China is a significant player in the global economic scene. Among emerging markets it is by far the biggest recipient of foreigninvestment. It gets in a week what India gets in a year. It has an enviable foreign reserve position and a national balance sheet which is the envy of most developing countries. Its currency is still pegged but is strong. It has absorbed Hong Kong without much ado. It has emerged into a formidable producer of low-cost goods ranging from frocks to washing machines.

The entry of China into the WTO - the economic equivalent of the UN - is only a formal recognition that China is very much a part of world trade.From a narrow view point India has to look at this development with some level of anxiety. With China coming in, we are going to definitely lose some market access opportunities in addition to the limelight.

Seattle will tell us which are the areas that will get affected though I can see domestic industry being rather worried about flooding of Indian markets by Chinese products.

There are however several reasons why analysts are delighted that China is joining WTO. For one the WTO imposes manyobligation on member states. It is in fact a super national entity which effectively limits the powers of nations with regard to trade and related matters. Westerners argue that by co-opting China into the system, it can be made to adhere to international norms. For example its track record in the area of intellectual property has not been much to write home about.

Secondly, its economic laws which are still hazy and little understood by the world will become transparent and in line with international laws. Thirdly, it has a massive government sector living on subsidies compared to which our own looks puny. So in entering WTO China is in a way committing itself to behave in the world economic arena.

In my view the biggest opportunity in this development is surely in the area of human rights. For a long time free thinking, free market protagonists have believed that freedom of speech has to go hand in hand with freedom of business. The right to choose has two sides to it: the right to choose the product ofyour choice and more importantly the right to have a government of your choice. China has been a flagrant violator of this basic philosophy.

It has for the last several years ruthlessly killed people who opposed Communism. According to one estimate more than 10 million people have died in the last 50 years in China under Mao Tse-Tung and other communist regimes. It has successfully practiced genocide in Tibet. Compared to these crimes, the crimes of Pinochet are petty larceny.

All these did not however prevent today's heroes like Jack Welch and Bill Gates from courting China. It is one of the tremendous ironies of the modern world that China so arrogantly and successfully tramples on human rights and still has American and European businessmen lining up on its shores. Most lovers of freedom genuinely hope that the entry of China into WTO will begin a process akin to the demolition of the Berlin Wall.

This may be wishful thinking. However, there is already news that the Peoples Army is upset with thisdevelopment since it sees a decline in its own role. Ageing communist politicians and the survival of bureaucracy would also be shifting uneasily as WTO insists on cuts in government subsidies. It is difficult to predict how all this will work out. However whatever our Leftists and economists of their ilk may think, freedom loving India stands out as a shining example of a country which is achieving the impossible: a poor nation which can have free speech andfree markets. From this view point China should learn more from India than from the West.

The author is a Delhi-based investment banker. His e-mail address is pnvijay@vsnl.com