Compete or Cooperate?

For a lasting peace with China, India must first resolve this dilemma. An extract

The fulcrum of redesigning our global foreign policy is balanced on mature India-China relations. However, a fundamental problem in policymaking towards China is that there is no clear or apparent consensus in India on the objectives of engagement with China. The domestic strategic discourse so far has also failed to come up with a clear criterion for evaluating the ‘means to be adopted’ in this regard. Even if India had defined objectives, there must also be a set of priorities, a strategy in place to achieve those objectives, as well as a financial and institutional architecture to sustain that achievement.

China is an ancient and cultured country with a long-standing peaceful interaction with India in the long history of more than 2,500 years. However, today it is a Communist Party-ruled nation. Indian democracy stands for transparency and access to information—something Indians have been used to for ages. China under communism can never be as transparent in its political and security matters. Therefore, Indians have to decode the nuances of the Chinese expressions and reactions, and not be deluded by atmospherics, as we have seen. This is the lesson of 2020 from the 18 one-to-one meetings between PM Modi and President Xi Jinping. This basic strategic understanding and a sense of history have eluded the comprehension of China-baiters in India, most of whom, unfortunately, exercise influence in policymaking. Much of this baiting is encouraged by those nations that are apprehensive of the influence of an India-China understanding, if ever, on global politics.

It is now time to cut through the barriers and begin by seeing the importance of China for India, and understand the reality of the present unequal economic and military endowment; and see this with clarity, and in a perspective based on cold analysis.

Our mutual interactive history shows that nothing innate or intrinsic stands in the way of India and China having friendly relations, with equal respect. In my view, China would not regard the border dispute as an obstacle worthy of prior removal if there was a strategic partnership with India based on matching defence hardware and cogent foreign policy. Nor is rivalry the reason, since there are hardly any international issues in which India and China have irresolvable fundamental conflicts of interest. Issue of conflict have been the outcome of compulsions of unstructured thinking, such as China’s view that the ‘1962 debacle’ can be repeated and India’s conviction that China is expansionist. Therefore, we must concern ourselves with the national security imperatives that necessitate developing stable India-China relations.

Good bilateral relations in the twenty-first century depend on the cost-benefit calculus of India and China coming together. I have, therefore, focused on what India must do to motivate China so that it responds appropriately to Indian interests and the cost we are willing to incur for it. All said and done, the bottom li