22 March 2013, 04:12 PM IST
Xi Jinping, who's just picked up the baton from former president Hu Jintao and is set to rule China for the next decade, has invoked a "Chinese dream". Those echoes from the American dream make it possible to hope that under Xi China could become a more 'normal' power, better integrated into a rule-governed international order. Prior to the industrial revolution in Europe China was the world's pre-eminent economic and technical power, much like the United States during the latter half of the 20th century (India wasn't too far behind either, before the Brits and the industrial revolution did us in). And Chinese elites certainly retain those long civilisational memories (which have by now pretty much eclipsed the revolutionary dreams of the Mao era).
Their wish is to recapture that pre-industrial pole position, in which case they will have to let their people realise a Chinese dream, a version of the American dream. And therein lies the paradox: in order to supersede the United States China will have to be more like the United States. With Xi taking over, China's GDP is three times what it was when Hu Jintao took over. What's built Chinese confidence is that its economic juggernaut barely slowed when Western economies keeled over during the post-Lehman financial crisis (India too has been badly hit, the 'India story' seems mortally wounded when China is still on song).
Growing Chinese confidence reflects in the differing personas of Hu and Xi. While Hu was a dour and colourless party apparatchik/ technocrat, Xi seems to have the trappings of a modern politician who knows how to smile into the camera (his English-knowing deputy, premier Li Keqiang, too shares the same attributes). While Hu was an insular politician, Xi has deep knowledge of how the West works and sent his daughter to Harvard. Xi's family suffered during the Cultural Revolution and he has spoken consistently of reform.
It's early days yet, but a more confident and outward-oriented China is better for the world – and for India -- than an insecure and suspicious China. In that sense the five principles governing relations with India that Xi has enunciated – with echoes of Jawaharlal Nehru's 'panchsheel' – not only show that India exists in Xi's worldview, but could also be the trigger for rebooting the India-China relationship. Xi has spoken of the border dispute between India and China as a complex issue left over from history, that should be settled in a spirit of mutual accommodation. Note that none of this has the teeth-clenched quality of China's territorial disputes with Japan, Vietnam and other east Asian nations.
Which gives rise to a great historical hope with Xi's rise to power. Perhaps China will cease to be paranoid about Tibet and therefore cut New Delhi some slack for hosting the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government-in-exile. This could lead to settling the boundary dispute roughly along the current LAC alignment provided New Delhi also is flexible – it too needs to abandon a teeth-clenched attitude regarding an imaginary line which the Brits drew on a map a century ago and Nehru ratified half a century ago, and which we subsequently took to be the non-negotiable territorial limits of Bharat Mata (see Abheek Barman's superb opinion piece on this in Economic Times). China and India settling their territorial dispute could then be the template for India and Pakistan settling their boundary dispute, enabling peace to finally break out in the subcontinent and its environs.
That would empower the Indian dream in at least two ways. First and more obviously, a benign security environment would be transformational for south Asia and enable India to focus more strongly on its economy, spend fewer resources on arms and improve the lives of millions. It would lead to a freer, more prosperous and less embattled India. Somewhat less obviously, the Chinese dream would be a beacon for the Indian dream as China's soft power among India's political elites is immense (I have elaborated this idea in greater detail in this opinion piece for TOI).
India has a fatalistic attitude towards development and harbours an inferiority complex vis-a-vis the West, as the West is seen to have an immense historical lead over us. A variant of this inferiority complex is to hold that the West is impossibly decadent and India need not strike out on this path, when development and modernity are what we secretly wish for as well (as in the sour grapes story). But if China can narrow this gap and catch up with the West, then we could not wear our historical pessimism and seeming denunciation of Western decadence as our armour. Indian fatalism would look unjustified and we would ditch poor standards of governance, enabling India to take up the same space in the world as it had during pre-industrial times.
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