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Sunday, Apr 10, 2005

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International - India & World

In the words of Deng Xiaoping

By P.S. Suryanarayana

SINGAPORE, April 9. Deng Xiaoping, China's late paramount leader, had said that "unless both India and China become well developed, there is no such thing as an Asian Century".

This observation acquires a strategic resonance of relevance to the current visit to India by the Chinese Prime Minister, Wen Jiabao.

Quoting Deng on these lines. Xu Xin, National Security Fellow at the Harvard University, told The Hindu that "for people like him [the late Chinese leader], the rise of India is a good thing."

Dr. Xu, who took part in a conference organised here by the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy earlier this week on the China-India engagement, said that "a new way of thinking" on their bilateral interactions mattered much to the policy planners in Beijing.

Viewed in this perspective, the issue before Beijing was not really whether India would be willing to play ball with the United States in pursuing a policy of containment of China, he pointed out.

Another key Chinese participant, Jia Qingguo, Professor, School of International Studies, Peking University, said China and India were now in "a mood to make necessary compromise" and that the border problem "is going to be resolved eventually."

The evolving India-China rapprochement "is certainly for real," Jairam Ramesh, India's Member of Parliament and Member of the National Advisory Council, said outside the conference.

Mr. Ramesh, author of a recent book on China and India, cited three reasons as empirical evidence: "the institutionalised format for dialogue on the border issue," their "first-ever strategic dialogue" that took place recently and the "take-off" in economic engagement.

Outlining reasons for this upturn, he said New Delhi should not fall into the trap of the "American view that India is a bulwark against Chinese expansionism." While India and China were competitors in the energy sector, the two "have [also] collaborated and are joint venture partners in a project in Sudan," he emphasised.

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