India and China are to huddle at the table of diplomacy for the first strategic dialogue between the countries Wednesday. Both nations have much to gripe, much to straighten out. Bilateral issues range from where the borders between the countries must be fixed to how trade should develop and who either country should side with.
China has long been displeased with India’s support for the Tibetan government in exile and the Dalai Lama. Apart from this, the Uighurs movement getting support from India must be irking the Chinks. India, on the other hand, is mighty displeased with China’s opposition to its entry into the Nuclear Supplies Group (NSG), and also its stonewalling the move to declare the Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar as a terrorist.
One must also include China’s expansionist regular intrusions into Indian territory which India is incapable of stopping. India also needs to urgently address trade deficit between the nations and the flooding of sub standard Chinese imports in the Indian markets.
While China has raised the hackles of India by funding the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and other infrastructure projects in countries such as Sri Lanka and Nepal, India has touched a raw nerve of China by working on defence partnerships with Vietnam, one of the countries that oppose China’s irredentist claims in South China Sea.
The change of guard in the Oval Office has necessitated adjustment among nations worldwide to countervail alterations in prerogatives of the US under Donald J Trump. And China now has to look at other potential markets, too, and more fervently, to keep its economy growing at the good pace it had set banking on the huge market for its cheap manufactured goods in the US and the West.
It had also decided to shift its focus from GDP targets to equitable development of masses when the huge Chinese middle class realised that they were not growing any richer although China was overshooting its GDP targets and that a few were growing filthy rich.
The arrival of Trump has heralded a pull-out from globalisation. It is a wake-up call for countries such as India which also have to revisit internal policies framed to support and propagate globalisation.
India might be able to perform better if it could make China behave better. Unfortunately, added to a weak economy is the haphazard diplomacy that disables India from achieving any concrete success in the international forum.
While China remains stronger in manufacturing and is getting India to receive goods for cheap, India finds its efforts to play to its strengths in IT and services being stonewalled by the northern neighbour. India and China have shared mistrust for a very long time now. There is no example of China showing any warmth towards India.
The Nehru era slogan of ‘Hindi Chini Bhai Bhai’ became a bitter dream from 1962 till date. In the meanwhile, China has become a mammoth superpower, both military and economically while India has dithered and become an even poorer country having very little relevance even in its own neighbourhood. The bilateral discussions slated for 22 February 2017 will be an acid test for Indian diplomacy of recent times.
