Around the time they turn 60, most people retire. This holds true whether they live in China or India or the US. How they celebrate this birthday says a lot about how their lives have gone. Have they done well at work? Have they enjoyed happy matrimony? Do they have dependants vying to inherit their property and stock options? Or, are they destitute? As long as answers to all but the last are in the affirmative, the odds are in favour of a reasonably decent bash.
Countries appear not very different in this regard. Except, they seem more involved in counting the coming glory days. When India turned 60 a couple of years ago, celebrations were cranked up for our democratic and economic accomplishments, but we seemed more concerned about projecting a multiplication of the same onto the future. Today, it?s the turn of the People?s Republic of China to ring in 60. In the intervening years, the global boom has gone bust. Growth forecasts for both countries have nosedived while their competition for planetary resources?like oil and uranium?has escalated. They are also increasingly conjoined on various global issues like climate change and financial reforms, not that they often volunteer such platform-sharing. More commonly, it?s forced onto them as part of different narratives?like, this is the Asian century.
Based on the long history of tectonic shifts, fear of friction runs rampant. On the China side, there is concern about whether the country?s achievements get adequate international respect or not. Over our side of the border, there is defensiveness about everything from China?s colossal foreign exchange advantage to its ballooning military budget. When commentators quote Chindia, why do we sense the Chinese disdaining the India factor? Are we insignificant in their calculations?
Well, when PM Manmohan Singh was visited China, he signed 11 memorandums and a shared vision for the 21st century??We are at an exiting point in history when the centre of gravity of the world is moving towards Asia.? The thing is, when the Chinese are already defensive about how their achievements are acknowledged by the world, it doesn?t help that India too refuses to kowtow to them. The global currency game is looking to their choices and their IPOs leave ours licking the dust. Yet, even as Chinese enterprise goes where no Indian has gone before, we refuse to admit its one-upmanship. Can India really afford such nationalism?
China Mobile is ushering in a new era with ring-back tones switched to a patriotic song?Jackie Chan and accompanists yodelling, ?A country stands up in the world.? Plus, the World Bank president opines that China is a stabilising force in the global economy today. Together, China and India are growing much more rapidly than developed countries. Ok, their futures are not fixed in stone.
Outsiders can?t stop worrying whether the dynamic duo will keep growing or whether they will succumb to internal weaknesses?relating to financial, political or state structures.
Chinese state structures have gotten a lot of predictable belittling over the years. But they have been shifting, evolving. For example, as compared to the post-Mao leadership, the Communist Party now boasts many leaders trained in the soft sciences. Not only do new bureaucratic fiefdoms like the environmental protection ministry boast specialists in international law, even traditional power centres in the party?s hierarchy are being headed by people with social science backgrounds.
Premier Wen Jiabao has said that adhering to existing legal procedures will prepare China for democracy. This statement is big in its implications. John Ikenberry of Princeton University has been one of the prominent representatives of these implications. As against those who posit the rise of Asia against the decline of the West, he sees the real struggle taking place between those who want to expand a rule-based global order, and those who are interested in more competitive spheres of influence. His theory works for the West and the rest, but also for India and China. It?s a questionof worldview: are the birthday boys performing to a shared arbiter court or are they at more gruesome odds?
