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India-China relations discussed

Venkatesh Athreya of the M.S. Swaminathan Foundation and R. Hariharan, retired colonel (left), at a seminar at the Pondicherry University on Monday.

PUDUCHERRY: Speakers at the one-day workshop on ‘Emerging China: Implications for India' held at the Pondicherry University on Monday, deliberated on a wide range of issues pertaining to Indo-Chinese relations, including the military and the economic aspects.

Venkatesh Athreya, Advisor, M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF), who made a comparative presentation on the economies of India and China, said that the policies followed by the Communist Party there was much different from the “neo-liberal” policies followed by the Government of India.

Though the two economies had similar shares in the global Gross Domestic Product during independence in the late 1940s, he said that the Chinese have leapfrogged in this aspect and their economy had shown higher growth consistently over the last few decades.

Pointing out that the Chinese have done much better in alleviating poverty, Professor Athreya said that their success in this front could be largely attributed to their achievements in land reforms which empowered the underprivileged in that country. “On the contrary, India had failed to fully implement three important components of the land reforms which included the land ceiling and distribution of land to the landless,” he said.

Also, the response of the two countries to the recent global financial crisis indicated the kind of policies that the governments have adopted. When the Chinese introduced the stimulus packages, it was in the form of investing in the physical infrastructure. On the other hand, India's policies encouraged “unregulated entry and exit of foreign capital as finance” in the stock market,” he said.

Earlier, Colonel R. Hariharan (Retired) spoke on the capabilities of the People Liberation Army and its relationship with the Communist Party of China. He also spoke on its history and patterns of deployment of its different wings.

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